Speeding up space travel - EM Drive

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Profile Gordon Lowe
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Message 1674577 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 4:43:46 UTC

As usual, lack of money slows things down, but the wheels of progress are moving...

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/
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Message 1674585 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 5:05:10 UTC

Good for travelling around our solar system but a bit slow for interstellar flight.
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Message 1674600 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 6:13:53 UTC

Still better than what we have now. ;~)
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Message 1674618 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 7:14:58 UTC - in response to Message 1674585.  

Good for travelling around our solar system but a bit slow for interstellar flight.

You can always build a BIGGER ONE! :D


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Message 1674624 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 7:32:21 UTC - in response to Message 1674618.  

My radiometer spins with no ejection of any fuel. It has run now for ten years or more but still requires energy from the sun.

If this work here is actually real then this amounts to a way of rectifying circular motion into linear motion.

I did my master's thesis on semi-confocal microwave cavities (Fabry-Perot interferometer). Didn't look for any thrust but obtained a Q-factor that was 30,000 or so.
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Message 1674679 - Posted: 7 May 2015, 13:35:58 UTC - in response to Message 1674618.  

Good for travelling around our solar system but a bit slow for interstellar flight.

You can always build a BIGGER ONE! :D

Bigger isn't necessarily going to be faster.
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Message 1675058 - Posted: 8 May 2015, 5:56:01 UTC - in response to Message 1674679.  

Good for travelling around our solar system but a bit slow for interstellar flight.

You can always build a BIGGER ONE! :D

Bigger isn't necessarily going to be faster.

Bigger should be stronger...or make an array of them...so could have MORE POWER! ;)

It's not like they would run out of juice in Space! :D


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Message 1676300 - Posted: 9 May 2015, 2:37:20 UTC

They report this thing converts electrical power into a force. Not energy to energy or power to power or force to force. Power to force. That's a remarkable claim.

We could put the engine on a wheel and make it drive the wheel round and round.

Hook the wheel up to a generator and you can generate electricity. The faster it turns the more power it generates because the force is constant (or so it seems).

You could generate arbitrary amounts of power depending how fast it can spin without flying apart. No reason you couldn't generate more power than you are using to run the engine itself.

You are talking about extracting energy out of nothingness.

So not only does it appear to violate conservation of momentum, but conservation of energy too.

I dunno...
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Message 1676604 - Posted: 9 May 2015, 3:21:03 UTC - in response to Message 1676300.  

Further to my last wetblanketry, I did some calcs...

With the engines they claim to have already built that generate 0.75N force with 1200 W input power, a 4 meter diameter rotor with two of the engines mounted on the periphery rotating at 57,000 rpm (ok thats fast) would be a perpetual motion machine. Spin it faster and you get free electricity.

Engineering-wise that would be a challenge but not completely out of the question. And we are talking about prototypes. They seem to believe they can improve them so it would be even more feasible.

If these things are real then we will have free electricity in unlimited quantities. No more green house gasses, gigantic desalination plants in California (and any desert you care to mention), total recycling because energy is not an issue. And on and on, use your imagination.

Why power your spaceships with nuclear reactors? Just use EM drives to generate the power and the thrust out of the void.

It all seems like a bit much.
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Message 1676951 - Posted: 9 May 2015, 6:12:46 UTC

Electric power is energy...and force during some time, makes work - which is also energy...

So it's energy to energy...and works OK!

But no...it is't perpetum mobile...nothing is! Not even Stars... ;)


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Message 1678121 - Posted: 11 May 2015, 6:02:12 UTC - in response to Message 1677046.  

But no...it is't perpetum mobile...nothing is! Not even Stars... ;)

Do we assume that we are talking perpetual motion?

Perpetuum mobile or any perpetuum device...it should give more energy than it's put in the system...

It doesn't exist! Even those null-drives use the energy from a GBR or some other Universe source... ;)


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Message 1678156 - Posted: 11 May 2015, 9:52:00 UTC

I think we can take it beyond Ludicrous speed all the way to Plaid....

All you have to do is wait for the specific impulse to build up to something useful although that might take a long long long time. People don't have the time to wait for the speed to build up....

Wonder exactly how long even a short flight to Mars might take waiting for this EM Thruster to build up momentum..
Never engage stupid people at their level, they then have the home court advantage.....
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Message 1678172 - Posted: 11 May 2015, 11:43:26 UTC - in response to Message 1678156.  

I think we can take it beyond Ludicrous speed all the way to Plaid....
All you have to do is wait for the specific impulse to build up to something useful although that might take a long long long time. People don't have the time to wait for the speed to build up....
Wonder exactly how long even a short flight to Mars might take waiting for this EM Thruster to build up momentum..

It only takes 1 year to reach nearly speed of light with 1 G acceleration.
But it takes a LOT of fuel.
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Message 1678179 - Posted: 11 May 2015, 12:41:53 UTC

If it works great nuclear reactors for space are the only time they make sense ,
plenty of uranium for that , or better still Helium 3, and there's plenty of that for fusion power

They use Iron drives for satilites so why not E.M drives

Beam me up Scotty is not that far away
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Message 1678184 - Posted: 11 May 2015, 13:22:12 UTC - in response to Message 1678179.  
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They use Iron drives for satilites so why not E.M drives

I Think you mean ion drives.
But ion drives have VERY low acceleration.
Humans need 1G to survive.
Thats about 10 m/s².

And how could nuclear reactors be used for propulsion?
Steam is of course possible but then you need a LOT of water.
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Message 1678697 - Posted: 12 May 2015, 8:56:38 UTC - in response to Message 1678156.  

I think we can take it beyond Ludicrous speed all the way to Plaid....

All you have to do is wait for the specific impulse to build up to something useful although that might take a long long long time. People don't have the time to wait for the speed to build up....

Wonder exactly how long even a short flight to Mars might take waiting for this EM Thruster to build up momentum..

Sure you have...just give me few blonds or brunetes & I populate the planet before we get there... :D

in current technology, without EM drive...a baby can be born before we get into Mars orbit! ;)


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Message 1678737 - Posted: 12 May 2015, 11:25:53 UTC - in response to Message 1678697.  

Sure you have...just give me few blonds or brunetes & I populate the planet before we get there... :D

Love triangles between people stuck in a spaceship the size of a kitchen for weeks and months? What could possibly go wrong?
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Message 1678984 - Posted: 13 May 2015, 3:54:06 UTC - in response to Message 1678737.  

Sure you have...just give me few blonds or brunetes & I populate the planet before we get there... :D

Love triangles between people stuck in a spaceship the size of a kitchen for weeks and months? What could possibly go wrong?


That's a very good point. The psychology of space travel really is just as important as the method of propulsion, imo.
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Message 1679064 - Posted: 13 May 2015, 5:08:06 UTC - in response to Message 1678184.  

I Think you mean ion drives.
But ion drives have VERY low acceleration.
Humans need 1G to survive.
Thats about 10 m/s².


Yep hehehe , they may have low acceleration but it builds up , you don't need to do the 1/4 mile in 2 sec you build up speed . You just don't need big fuel tanks and extra weight .

Not shore what you mean by 1G to survive ! yes our body's need 1g but that's air pressure not speed , our body would boil at lower pressure's .

Have you seen what happens to a glass of water in a vacuum'd space . It boil's , we are 70% water .

1G for gravity can be simulated by spinning the work space the humans use
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Message 1679117 - Posted: 13 May 2015, 9:25:40 UTC - in response to Message 1679064.  
Last modified: 13 May 2015, 9:30:49 UTC

1G for gravity can be simulated by spinning the work space the humans use

Yes. I forgot.
Otherwise the muscles and bones will detoriate.
And pressure have to be 1 atm othervise we can't breath...
Because of the great height of the air pressure on Mount Everest is only 326 mbar, barely a third of the air pressure at sea level (which also means that there are about a third as much oxygen as at sea level). Therefore is the boiling point of water already at 70 degrees Celsius at the top of Mount Everest, instead of the normal 100 degrees Celsius at sea level.

Hmm. Seems easy to cook food in space:)
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Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Speeding up space travel - EM Drive


 
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