On April 13 2016 08:22 oBlade wrote: Yes, I'm implying accelerating a one gram spacecraft with a laser to the 20% the speed of light in minutes to visit other stars is on the same level.
no it is not the same level.... one thing is physics, one thing is magic (or extremly bad highschool level experimenting and ambient variable control trying to pass as physics)
we know light has an impulse, we know it can be used as a thruster
saying you want to build a reactionless drive that violates conservation of momentum on the other hand... well nope!
No..one requires engineering breakthroughs, the other requires physics breakthroughs. (both of which may or may not be possible.)
Remember, almost certainly current physics is wrong....its approximately right, but it is almost certainly wrong (always has been it just gets less wrong)
So there is a tiny possibility that the Way that current physics is wrong is a way that makes us think the EM drive is just experimental error. (no way of knowing without more tests, but the existing tests aren't promising)
For the other one, it works great as a highschool physics problem, but reality isn't made up of frictionless, massless pulleys. Space is not empty and sending a signal from a 1 gram object over multiple light years would make it practically impossible to detect. (again it might be doable, but further testing might show that to be impossible as well)
I'm sorry, but you don't have any background in physics, do you?
Would you be so kind and give a source to the paper that states that "almost certainly" our understanding of physics is wrong? There's some things that are simply not. Conservation of Momentum is fundamental. There's no argument that this is "maybe wrong". It's a fact. There's no indication nor reason to assume otherwise, other than believing in magic.
And no, there's no tiny chance that the EM Drive works: it doesn't. Not the way it is described. What makes us think that there's experimental error is that the conducted tests were done in a hard vacuum on earth (you can't have "no interaction" there). It almost certainly is ablating it's copper cone (the "Frustum") and creates propulsion that way.
The EM Drive is in the same league as the E-Cat, just with less harmful intentions.
NEW YORK CITY—The top of the new World Trade Center building was buried inside the clouds, but everyone's focus was on the stars. Yuri Milner, the man whose investments have helped fund the Breakthrough Prizes and Breakthrough Initiatives, was here to announce his newest venture: Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send hardware to the nearest stars quickly enough for many of us to live to see their arrival.
Present to back the project was physicist Stephen Hawking. "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits," Hawking told the audience. "Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America."
He went on to ask, "How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines. The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it."
On hand for the announcement was a group that any geeks would consider an all-star cast: physicist Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, the woman behind COSMOS, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, astronaut Mae Jemison, and former NASA researcher Pete Worden, who will lead the project.
Milner announced the program on the anniversary of Yuri Gargarin's trip to space, noting he was named after him. He chose the location based on the fact that the top of the World Trade Center was "closer to the stars than any other rooftop in America." Milner said that the effort was driven by a single question: "Can we literally reach the stars, and can we do it in our lifetime?"
Milner is backing the $100 million R&D program necessary to get this to work. Existing technology won't do; New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, and it would take 78,000 years to get to any of the stars in Alpha Centauri, a nearby three-star system. The plutonium in its power systems alone weighs 11kg and would require staggering amounts of energy to accelerate to the necessary speeds.
Instead, Breakthrough Starshot plans to build what's essentially a spacecraft on a chip, which Milner called a nanocraft. A gram-scale wafer will include "cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment." The technology behind the power supply wasn't mentioned; communications at these distances will require something with pretty considerable power, even when using the optical communication that Breakthrough Starshot plans to rely on.
NEW YORK CITY—The top of the new World Trade Center building was buried inside the clouds, but everyone's focus was on the stars. Yuri Milner, the man whose investments have helped fund the Breakthrough Prizes and Breakthrough Initiatives, was here to announce his newest venture: Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send hardware to the nearest stars quickly enough for many of us to live to see their arrival.
Present to back the project was physicist Stephen Hawking. "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits," Hawking told the audience. "Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America."
He went on to ask, "How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines. The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it."
On hand for the announcement was a group that any geeks would consider an all-star cast: physicist Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, the woman behind COSMOS, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, astronaut Mae Jemison, and former NASA researcher Pete Worden, who will lead the project.
Milner announced the program on the anniversary of Yuri Gargarin's trip to space, noting he was named after him. He chose the location based on the fact that the top of the World Trade Center was "closer to the stars than any other rooftop in America." Milner said that the effort was driven by a single question: "Can we literally reach the stars, and can we do it in our lifetime?"
Milner is backing the $100 million R&D program necessary to get this to work. Existing technology won't do; New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, and it would take 78,000 years to get to any of the stars in Alpha Centauri, a nearby three-star system. The plutonium in its power systems alone weighs 11kg and would require staggering amounts of energy to accelerate to the necessary speeds.
Instead, Breakthrough Starshot plans to build what's essentially a spacecraft on a chip, which Milner called a nanocraft. A gram-scale wafer will include "cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment." The technology behind the power supply wasn't mentioned; communications at these distances will require something with pretty considerable power, even when using the optical communication that Breakthrough Starshot plans to rely on.
Submitted for per review or passed per review? One is easier than the other.
Anyway, I read up quickly on the wiki page (yes Wikipedia, not the em drive homepage...). And it says that it's pushed by a private company and most scientists are very sceptical. That alone should make you think very carefully before you get too excited about the idea.
The fact that it claims fantastic new physics (conservation of momentum) is another major warning sign.
It says on wiki that there is little consensus amongst the supporters regarding exactly how it works. Red flag.
And that's when i stopped reading. So well, feel free to hope, but I'm not holding my breath for this technology to take off.
physics is most likely wrong, in those circumstances outside of the validity space of current theories. newtonian physics is right for low velocities and low energy densities (low gravitative fields), and small distances (on a cosmologic scale) the "em drive" operates at very low energy densities, low gravitative fields and entirely inside the realm of physics we have already measured....
you expect to find a unicorn on times square. yes there might be some mythological creature in the trenches of the deep sea that we have not explored, but pumping microwaves into a metal cavity for finding a refutation of conservation of momentum is ridiculously stupid.
maybe there is a very very sligth imbalance in conservation of momentum inside of black holes when we finally understand a general theory of gravitation and quantum field theory of the other forces... but that is unlikely (as it holds up in all component theories), but that has nothing to do with the stuff we already know (and have measured again, and again, and again, and again....)
On April 14 2016 00:35 puerk wrote: physics is most likely wrong, in those circumstances outside of the validity space of current theories. newtonian physics is right for low velocities and low energy densities (low gravitative fields), and small distances (on a cosmologic scale) the "em drive" operates at very low energy densities, low gravitative fields and entirely inside the realm of physics we have already measured....
you expect to find a unicorn on times square. yes there might be some mythological creature in the trenches of the deep sea that we have not explored, but pumping microwaves into a metal cavity for finding a refutation of conservation of momentum is ridiculously stupid.
maybe there is a very very sligth imbalance in conservation of momentum inside of black holes when we finally understand a general theory of gravitation and quantum field theory of the other forces... but that is unlikely (as it holds up in all component theories), but that has nothing to do with the stuff we already know (and have measured again, and again, and again, and again....)
Thanks for this. I wanted to make essentially the same argument, but didn't have the energy to present it at an understandable level. Extra points for "unicorn on times square". I may reuse that expression at occasion.
NEW YORK CITY—The top of the new World Trade Center building was buried inside the clouds, but everyone's focus was on the stars. Yuri Milner, the man whose investments have helped fund the Breakthrough Prizes and Breakthrough Initiatives, was here to announce his newest venture: Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send hardware to the nearest stars quickly enough for many of us to live to see their arrival.
Present to back the project was physicist Stephen Hawking. "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits," Hawking told the audience. "Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America."
He went on to ask, "How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines. The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it."
On hand for the announcement was a group that any geeks would consider an all-star cast: physicist Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, the woman behind COSMOS, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, astronaut Mae Jemison, and former NASA researcher Pete Worden, who will lead the project.
Milner announced the program on the anniversary of Yuri Gargarin's trip to space, noting he was named after him. He chose the location based on the fact that the top of the World Trade Center was "closer to the stars than any other rooftop in America." Milner said that the effort was driven by a single question: "Can we literally reach the stars, and can we do it in our lifetime?"
Milner is backing the $100 million R&D program necessary to get this to work. Existing technology won't do; New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, and it would take 78,000 years to get to any of the stars in Alpha Centauri, a nearby three-star system. The plutonium in its power systems alone weighs 11kg and would require staggering amounts of energy to accelerate to the necessary speeds.
Instead, Breakthrough Starshot plans to build what's essentially a spacecraft on a chip, which Milner called a nanocraft. A gram-scale wafer will include "cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment." The technology behind the power supply wasn't mentioned; communications at these distances will require something with pretty considerable power, even when using the optical communication that Breakthrough Starshot plans to rely on.
NEW YORK CITY—The top of the new World Trade Center building was buried inside the clouds, but everyone's focus was on the stars. Yuri Milner, the man whose investments have helped fund the Breakthrough Prizes and Breakthrough Initiatives, was here to announce his newest venture: Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send hardware to the nearest stars quickly enough for many of us to live to see their arrival.
Present to back the project was physicist Stephen Hawking. "I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits," Hawking told the audience. "Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America."
He went on to ask, "How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines. The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it."
On hand for the announcement was a group that any geeks would consider an all-star cast: physicist Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, the woman behind COSMOS, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, astronaut Mae Jemison, and former NASA researcher Pete Worden, who will lead the project.
Milner announced the program on the anniversary of Yuri Gargarin's trip to space, noting he was named after him. He chose the location based on the fact that the top of the World Trade Center was "closer to the stars than any other rooftop in America." Milner said that the effort was driven by a single question: "Can we literally reach the stars, and can we do it in our lifetime?"
Milner is backing the $100 million R&D program necessary to get this to work. Existing technology won't do; New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, and it would take 78,000 years to get to any of the stars in Alpha Centauri, a nearby three-star system. The plutonium in its power systems alone weighs 11kg and would require staggering amounts of energy to accelerate to the necessary speeds.
Instead, Breakthrough Starshot plans to build what's essentially a spacecraft on a chip, which Milner called a nanocraft. A gram-scale wafer will include "cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment." The technology behind the power supply wasn't mentioned; communications at these distances will require something with pretty considerable power, even when using the optical communication that Breakthrough Starshot plans to rely on.
Not much, I started school as a mechanical engineer, but completely switched to become a programmer. I'm only basing my opinions off what I read from the nasaspaceflight forums and some "reliable" articles.
Saying it cant work without proof is not that much better than saying it will work without proof. Most of the time you have to deal with lack of information which makes it hard to judge things properly.
On April 14 2016 01:48 Yrr wrote: Saying it cant work without proof is not that much better than saying it will work without proof. Most of the time you have to deal with lack of information which makes it hard to judge things properly.
but there is lots and lots of information. they put decent amounts of electric energy in the form of microwaves into a metal cavity.... then they observe a tiny net force in one direction. so far so normal, there are 1000 and one reasons why that can happen (imperfect vacuum, material ablatio etc) and they jump to "hey we found a violation of conservation of momentum, something something quantum, something something magic"...
the most generous summary on that whole thing is i guess:
On April 14 2016 01:48 Yrr wrote: Saying it cant work without proof is not that much better than saying it will work without proof. Most of the time you have to deal with lack of information which makes it hard to judge things properly.
but there is lots and lots of information. they put decent amounts of electric energy in the form of microwaves into a metal cavity.... then they observe a tiny net force in one direction. so far so normal, there are 1000 and one reasons why that can happen (imperfect vacuum, material ablatio etc) and they jump to "hey we found a violation of conservation of momentum, something something quantum, something something magic"...
You are most likely correct but until the paper is peer reviewed we cant say anything except for lets wait for it.
The most used sentence in science is/should be, "I dont know"
Also did I miss Blue Origin signing a contract with NASA for flights to the ISS? How is/will Bezos have Astronauts in his shuttle just to come back down after a few minutes as that his current plan no resupply etc not before 2020 at least...
On April 14 2016 04:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Also did I miss Blue Origin signing a contract with NASA for flights to the ISS? How is/will Bezos have Astronauts in his shuttle just to come back down after a few minutes as that his current plan no resupply etc not before 2020 at least...
The New Shepard doesn't fly high enough to reach the ISS (though Blue Origin is currently building a much bigger rocket as well as supplying engines for the next ULA rocket). As I understand it, they're gonna start taking tourists some time in 2018 for a 12 minute trip.
On April 14 2016 04:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Also did I miss Blue Origin signing a contract with NASA for flights to the ISS? How is/will Bezos have Astronauts in his shuttle just to come back down after a few minutes as that his current plan no resupply etc not before 2020 at least...
I think your confusion is thinking that they are NASA astronauts. The test astronauts will be employed by B.O. (maybe borrow some from nasa/a.f./their schools) and the paying astronauts are tourists. There is no plan to have NASA as a client or going to the ISS, not for now at least.
and blue origins biggest difference to other launch companies is not hight, but orbital velocity.. the shepard just makes small hops almost straight up and down..
On April 14 2016 10:13 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: But see NASA actually has a plane for that... and it last longer as well.
that plane does not get high enough to see earth as that nice blue ball against a black backdrop of "spaaaaaace" the blue origin capsule provides weightlessness at the apex and that beautiful sight.. some might pay for that....
EPT
![[image loading]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/quantum_vacuum_virtual_plasma.png)
