Propellantless Field Propulsion and application

[khallow]

Let's also keep in mind that the Manhattan Project was suboptimal in terms of value for money spent. If US and its allies had had considerable time, they could have found more efficient ways to fund atomic bomb development. A slower pace means cheaper effort overall, I think.

[GI-Thruster]

This is a really interesting thread.  It's disappointing that it was disturbed by so many off topic comments and red herrings.  If I may, I'd like to share a perspective that I hope might be useful.  I'll understand if all our friends at JSC are busy elsewhere, putting their lives back in order after the storm.  Best wishes. . .

For space travel to come into anything like a "Golden Age" as did Earth, sea and air travel; it has to be 4 things: safe, quick, convenient and economical.  These should be a bare minimum requirement.  Also there's a concomitant observation here, that "golden age" space travel does not require FTL travel.  I for one would be happy with a "1 gee solution" where we could get from place to place around our planetary system while constantly accelerating at 1 gee.  Accelerate half way to the Moon at 1 gee (Earth gee), turn around and accelerate negatively the second half of the way--you can be on the Moon in less time than it takes to fly from NY to LA, you can be to Mars at its closest approach in 2 days, or at its greatest distance in 5 days, or to the asteroids in 6, or to Jupiter in 7, or to Saturn, it's pretty moon Titan and a view of the rings in 9 days.  That is mastery of this planetary system so long as it is relatively safe, quick, convenient and economical.

There's only one option mentioned in this thread that holds out this possibility and it is the gravinertial engineering happening with the Mach Lorentz Thruster (MLT) explained by Space-Drive and as L-M has been well aware of for years.

There were only a few objections to this found in this thread.  If I may paraphrase:

1) Woodward must be measuring ion wind.

Rubbish.  His thruster creates the same thrust in air as it does in hard vacuum and everywhere between.  It's very well insulated and doesn't create ion wind.  He has also taken adequate precautions to show that he is not getting electrostatic or magnetic coupling, that no thermal effects are unaccounted for, etc.  Anyone can have access to his work.  None of it is done in a corner.  He invites all comers to be involved in his process about which he generally updates a very large list of guys like the people posting in this thread; so they can contribute however they like and see he does only good science.  Anyone who wants to take the time to read the relevant literature, get up to speed on the research and be involved is invited to do so.

2) The MLT doesn't produce enough thrust. 

Okay.  "Enough thrust" is pretty subjective.  Woodward is certainly producing thrusts more than an order magnitude above the noise floor of his test apparatus and he is working to develop a "demonstrator" that should end a lot of these sorts of objections.  However, I personally don't see how people unfamiliar with his work can say that his test items don't produce enough thrust.  Isn't that like saying you don't like bree cheese without ever having tasted it?

3)  This is a violation of GR. 

It is not.  It is also not a violation of any of the conservation laws.  Unlike the Shawyer devise mentioned early in this thread, it is based upon likely physics; whereas Shawyer really is asking everyone to forget about conservation of momentum.  Woodward has been published in peer reviewed journals for more than a decade and there are no objections outstanding.  People who object to his physics are generally folks who not only have not studied GR, they have not studied Mach's Principle and they are not familiar with any of the theory published over the years--basically, your envious QM guys who wish they had the answers Woodward seems to.

4)  It won't give us FTL travel. 

Well, this is true.  The MLT cannot ever produce FTL.  However, it is based upon a relatively unexplored (though 100 year old) area of physics, mastery of which could easily produce things like warp drive and wormhole travel.  That's a bit off for now.  First it would be nice to have impulse engines before we work on warp drive so, it's not much of an objection that Woodward's current work is not on FTL travel.  However, the gravinertial theory and engineering being developed now by Woodward et. al. is just exactly the stuff we need to understand how to make warp drives and traversable wormholes in the future.  And there simply is not another player worth watching.

5)  It's going to be so inefficient that it will be impractical.

No actually.  It could easily prove to be so efficient that it can provide its own energy source.  Now please, everyone wait for me to explain.

Space-Drive mentioned that in order to rectify periodic mass fluctuation into a unified and therefore useful force, the MLT essentially pushes heavy and pulls light.  That's the name of the game.  When the mass temporarily fluctuates up, you push on it.  When it fluctuates down, you pull on it.  There is never a violation in conservation involved because the mass-energy/momentum is being transferred back and forth between the active mass in the thruster and the rest of the universe.  The mass of the universe never changes nor does its momentum.  Woodward is just using a "sneaky trick" by pushing and pulling on the temporarily fluctuated mass in his ceramic.  When he does this, he is actually stealing momentum from the causally connected universe and putting it to better use.  In this case, the universe is the system to consider as a closed system so far as doing conservation balancing is concerned and the MLT is the great beneficiary of the system--not so different from the instance of walking.  When you walk West, our planet turns slightly slower West, but no one notices.

What Star-Drive did not mention is that Woodward is only creating fluctuations of less than 100%.  Others have driven their test items further and teams are working now to do this in the future.  What does it mean to drive an MLT past a 100% mass fluctuation or dm>m condition?  Well, we think it means that temporarily, the reactive mass in such a thruster would be negative mass with negative inertia.  If this is true (seems it is) and obtainable (there are already test items that have appeared to do this though that datum is inconclusive for lack of test controls--these tests were not run by Woodward in his vacuum chamber on his ARC Lite balance) then MLT's not only can be constructed to be fantastically efficient, they can even be used to harvest gravinertial energy used to run other MLT's and push spacecraft.  That means rangeless spacecraft (so far as the propulsion systems are concerned) and also holds out promise in the future to develop cheap energy, warp drives and traversable wormholes.

And these possibilities make all the time and attention you might invest in understanding Woodward's work, worth the effort.  IMHO

[khallow]

Several comments. First, conservation of energy is going to keep your system's overall mass-energy from changing. The idea as I understand it, is that you charge up a capacitor, increasing its mass slightly, push, then discharge the cap, reducing its mass slightly, and pull. The problem is that the energy of the capacitor has to go somewhere. Since you want to periodically charge the capacitor, you either need enough power on hand to charge it at the desired frequency, or you store the energy elsewhere in your vehicle. In the former case, you probably would generate more thrust by shining a laser or even selectively radiating heat to one side.

In the latter case, I don't see evidence that the system is open and hence capable of generating a net thrust. For example, I see a net force generated when you move energy from one capacitor to another storage device (be it a capacitor, inductor, or whatever). My take is that the forces induced by moving this energy around will counter the net force of this device. Having said this, we probably can as in a number of other proposed propellantless propulsion technologies generate a net torque and rotate an object with this setup.

Second, this device is extremely inefficient and we have no way, currently, of charging a capacitor to the degree that makes interesting thrust (according to the model). Maybe a large scale (on the order of kilometers or larger) would do since the thrust is apparently proportional to the square of the voltage difference across the capacitor and how much voltage you can charge before the capacitor arcs is proportional to the size of the capacitor.

[GI-Thruster]

Hi Karl.  These are thoughtful remarks here.  Short responses:

". . .conservation will keep the system's mass-energy from changing"

Yes.  but the MLT's "system" includes all of the universe so this is not unexpected.  The thruster participates in a momentum exchange with the entire, causally connected universe.

"The idea as I understand it, is that you charge up a capacitor, increasing its mass slightly, push, then discharge the cap, reducing its mass slightly, and pull. The problem is that the energy of the capacitor has to go somewhere."

This is close, however; the MLT actually has two push phases and two pull phases for each complete cycle.  This is why Star-Drive mentioned we look for the second harmonic signature of the ac applied.  As to the energy going somewhere, in the ac signal to the caps and coils, well, that's a matter of impedance matching.  When done properly, the system can be remarkably efficient.  I think you have in mind instead, something like a dc system and that would be inefficient but happily, we're using ac sign waves and once matched the source and load form a rather elegant couple.

I'm not sure why you are saying this system is inefficient.  You obviously have not read any of the relevant literature.  Thrust efficiency scales to the quartic, not quadratic; power of applied voltage.  This is one of the things that makes an authentic Mach Effect signal identifiable, it scales to the 4th power of input voltage.  And I can tell you, it is not inefficient.  MLT thrust also scales with the cube of frequency and Dr. Woodward is only dabbling in the kHz range for now because he doesn't want to explore the whole new set of variables introduced once one enters "wormhole territory" or goes to dm>m.

Once you are producing negative mass for any length period of time, and lets remember, negative mass has negative inertia--it will appear to violate normal physics and self accelerate--the scaling effects are harder to predict.  So Woodward is working at low ultrasonic frequencies to avoid dm>m.  However, guys like Paul March are designing to run in the MHz range with mass fluctuations well over 3 million %.  This should actually draw more momentum and energy from the gravinertial field than it takes to run the devise, and make it appear to be an "overunity" devise.  Obviously, it is not truly "overunity" because it's system includes the entire universe and the system's net energy does not increase.  However, the MLT is harvesting both energy and momentum and from its beneficiaries' point of view (ours) it appears like an overunity thruster.  It should be able to produce net energy simply by attaching it to a generator, for example.

So no, none of this is anything like inefficient and I encourage you to look at the actual literature.  It's worth your time.

[mboeller]

So no, none of this is anything like inefficient and I encourage you to look at the actual literature.  It's worth your time.

do you have a link or can you suggest some papers?  I have found only this page until now:

http://www.woodwardeffect.org/

It contains all presentations from Woodwards homepage too (AFAIK)

[GI-Thruster]

I think it's always best to poke around and see for yourself as it's hard for me to suggest anything without knowing what your skill set is, your specific interests etc.  However, I will admit that I like this:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/staif2000.pdf

from here:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/Woodward.html

as well as the link at the top of page 3 in this thread.  Anyone who wants to pursue an interest a bit further can let me know and I'll have you put on the open email distribution where you can make connections for other things like papers that are not posted on the web.  For instance, much of the writing and presenting on MLT tech the last few years has been at the Space Technologies and Applications International Forum (STAIF) and those papers cannot, because of IP issues; simply be posted on the web.  They can however be shared privately and they are certainly fascinating.  Also I should mention that the cutting edge news will certainly be presented at the Space Propulsion and Energy Sciences International Forum this coming February:

http://www.ias-spes.org/SPESIF.html

Hope that helps.

[mboeller]

Hi GI-Thruster;

thank you for the inks. The link to the SPESIF conference was new for me. Will this conference replace STAIF? The content seems to be the same, especially section F.   

I find the paper from paul marchs STAIF 2007 presentation quite fascinating. Most of the math is above my head (I'm only a normal air-and space technology engineer working in development and production as a materials & process engineer) but field propulsion technologies (Heim Drive, Woodward) are a scientific field which caught my attention years ago because normal rocket propulsion (even orion style nuclear pulse propulsion) will open "only" the solar system for exploration and chemical rocket propulsion will allow us only to reach mars, nothing more. So for me field propulsion seem the only way forward.

http://www.cphonx.net/weffect/STAIF-2007%20MLT%20Powered%20Spacecraft-Final-3.1_W-O%20Appendix.ppt

One thing I find part fascinating and part strange because of the coincidence is that the company EESTOR develops at the moment large bariumtitanate capacitors to store large amounts of electricity. The same material and structure(?) seems to be beneficial for a high performance MLT-Thruster too.

[GI-Thruster]

Yes, SPESIF is indeed replacing STAIF now that that historic conference that ran, was it 25 or 35 years? is now at an end.  SPECIF is in fact being organized by some of the same folks who ran STAIF section F, like NASA' s Tony Robertson and I believe Paul Murad is still involved as well.  I don't know because I haven't asked but I suspect people like Dr. James Woodward from CS Fullerton and Dr. Eric Davis from EarthTech will continue to chair the conferences.

The EESTOR caps are indeed very interesting technology.  If it delivers as claimed, they will have about the same energy density as very good LiPo batteries but have such a large power density that they can be charged in just a few minutes and be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than batteries.  Just the sort of stuff we need for electric cars.  However, I doubt they would be the best choice for an MLT.  EESTOR has a very unusual construction technique in mind that is unlike normal sintering of BaTiO3 caps and certainly not a single crystal so it may not work in an MLT.  Guess we'll have to wait and see!  Paul March is currently working on a high Q Teflon cap design and it may be possible to use several other sorts of materials like electrostrictors (PMN-PT), magnetostrictors (Terfenol-D) and even some dielectric elastomers which would certainly break the price barrier for materials as these couldn't be cheaper.

[Lampyridae]

The MLT thrusters are certainly interesting, and although I know nothing about high-K materials and general relativity, I will be cheering from the sidelines.

To khallow, yes the engine may be inefficient, but at the moment it's (a) a long way from reaching maturation and (b) doesn't dump any propellant. I'm willing to bet that the total impulse and produced by these things is in a nuclear-electric scheme is more than what you would get from a direct thermionic or fission fragment setup for the same quantity of fuel.

[Sith]

Yes, SPESIF is indeed replacing STAIF now that that historic conference that ran

This is a new agency?

[GI-Thruster]

I wouldn't call STAIF or SPESIF an "agency."  They're just professional conferences.  STAIF came out of the nuke industry and was run in Albuquerque, NM for more than 25 years.  I was at the last conference and ought to remember just how many years because there was a "so long--see ya!" ceremony but I just don't remember.

STAIF section F has been a significant support to futures concepts, especially propulsion for several years.  It was the black sheep member of STAIF that many tended to look down on.  However, it was certainly the most exciting section in the conference.  Well, section F will live on at the new SPESIF conference held in Huntsville AL starting this coming February.  Keep an eye out and if you can afford the time, try to attend!

[khallow]

Looking at this more carefully, I'd have to disagree on the MLT.  First, the explanation (as I understand it) for the thrust appears wrong. As I understand it, the claim is that the engine is pushing against existing gravitational fields from distant objects (Mach's principle effectively). But it works just the same in the absence of other matter, that is, even in situations where Mach's principle wouldn't apply. That indicates to me that the momentum (of the thrust claimed to be produced) would be transfered by a combination of gravitation waves and electromagnetic waves (photons). A dipole like a capacitor should generate some EM waves, I think, but I'm not clear on what directions they'd be propagating in. I suspect that they would be orthogonal to the direction of thrust though. So we're probably speaking of a way to produce gravity waves biased towards some direction opposite the desired thrust direction.

Second, the model doesnt' include thrust from current flows. If I discharge one capacitor and charge a second, my take is that current flow (net flow will be from first capacitor to second capacitor) will generate some amount of thrust. And for a model like this one, some of that thrust will be counter to the desired thrust direction. My concern is that we have a net zero (linear) thrust engine as a result.

A further indication that this might be the case is the experiment setup described in one of the linked papers above. I'll repost for clarification:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/staif2000.pdf

After the paper proper, there is the set of figures. Figure 6 shows the experiment. The equipment is suspended by a thin wire which is the axis that the experiment rotates around and two er thrusters are mounted so that they push in the same rotation direction with the wire as an axis, but opposite directions for linear (translational) force. Such an experiment generates torsion (rotation force) not linear force. Also, it appears that power is fed in from above the system. So we may be missing a key component of the overall forces on the system.

An improvement on the engine would have both thrusters on one side, pointing in the same direction, while an appropriate nonconductive counterweight rests on the opposite arm to balance the engine. Systemwide, this still just measures torque of the entire apparatus, but the thrusters would have to be generating net thrust in order for net torque to be observed.

In my humble opinion, the experiment needs to have everything including the power supply on this arm. If there is net thrust under those circumstances, then we have a winner. Glancing at the experiment, I don't see fault with the rest of the experiment, just placement of the capacitors and the power supply (or at least a good justification for why one can remove the power supply).

Finally, there has been some talk about being able to produce energy from the MLT in an extreme operating regime without an explanation for where that energy comes from (remember it works even in the absence of a gravitational field). I think this just indicates that the model doesn't work in that regime.

Here's the reason why. Whenever you have a possible process that produces energy from a system, you need to ask yourself if the process appears in nature. If it does, then you're set. If it doesn't, then you need to explain why the process doesn't appear. As far as I know, we don't observe energy releases of this form. My take is that the mechanism for creating energy here is simple enough that we probably should be seeing anomalous energy production in extremely energetic events and locations like supernova, neutron stars, black holes, etc. While that doesn't indicate that the overall model is flawed in the regime we're really interested in, it is a warning sign.

[GI-Thruster]

Karl, I appreciate your interest here but I want to recommend again that you look at the literature. 

Sonny White at NASA's Johnson Space Center has a ZPF based theory about why these test items produce thrust that is an unrelated explanation for the thrust--unrelated to Mach's Principle.  However, that maverick explanation aside, no.  MLT thrust cannot be explained apart from holding Mach's Principle.  In fact, all the MLT's UFG's and rotators being built are considered to be providing empirical evidence for Machian physics.  So whatever understanding you have that these items ought to work whether Mach is right or wrong are certainly misunderstandings.

You can also forget about gravitational waves, etc.  Mach's principle states that inertia is the direct result of all the mass in the universe's gravitational effects on its various parts.  It is in fact chiefly the farthest mass that is the source of the GI field or Far Off Active Matter (FOAM).  If this theory behind inertia's origin is wrong, the thrusters will not work (except unless Sonny White's explanation obtains, which is its own issue.)

I'm not sure how to address your other points and I don't want to treat them flippantly.  On your complaints about how the wire pendulum ought to have been designed, I'm not sure I see your point.  If both thrusters were to have been placed on one side of the wire, and an inactive mass on the other to balance it, this would simply have made any observation harder to make for surely, we would have twice the mass and the same thrust.  Since F=MA, this would just make for a less sensitive design.

However, let me remind that this design was built without funding on Tom Mahood's checkbook for his Master's Thesis.  It was designed to be simple, cheap and demonstrate force.  It succeeded brilliantly a decade ago and that work is now long over.  After that followed work using the U-80 load cell and following that, the current high fidelity equipment was put in place, the ARC Lite thrust balance.  The ARC Lite is truly a world class piece of test equipment.  If you want to object to equipment and protocols, I would suggest you look at the current designs as surely, past work that is not being repeated is not worth objecting to at all.  Though, I think it's noteworthy that the cheap wire pendulum did demonstrate thrust and there still exists to this day, the videos that show this.

Final observation for you to consider, Karl.  I don't know your background but you're obviously very bright and latching onto serious issues even when you haven't yet been fully informed.  Let me just say that the likelyhood you will find a serious objection that obtains with a minor investment of time and energy is very unlikely.

Dr. Woodward's Ph.D. is in the history of gravity physics.  He's an educator and experimentalist who taught physics for decades at California State University at Fullerton and still runs a lab there.  His team is composed of many of the most brilliant minds in engineering and physics available today, Oxford Ph.D.'s and NASA engineers all looking over Woodward's shoulder to see he only does good science.  You're invited to get up to speed and join the team if you like.  However, I would suggest to you that before you make an objection, you invest the time to understand the work.  I assure you this will be worth all the effort.

[kraisee]

From what I've read so far I'm still skeptical about any claims of thrust without propellant, but I am quite interested in knowing for sure before writing anything off.

What interests me is what it will take to actually prove this one way or the other?

How big an experiment (physical size and cost) is going to be needed to prove or dispel this once and for all?

Ross.

[GI-Thruster]

Ross, I'm a philosopher by training so I think I can speak to the issue of what constitutes  proof.  In a nutshell, all "proof" is an illusion.

All we can hope for is evidence that is sufficiently compelling that those interested in seeing the work get funded will indeed be compelled.  And to be frank about it, there have already been plenty of people step forward and want to provide funding.  Dr. Woodward always turns them down.

What we need is a "demonstrator" that produces enough thrust that people like Dr. Woodward and agencies like DARPA are so convinced that they take action.  A $50 million grant from DARPA would put hundreds or thousands of engineers and physicists to work and we'd be on the road to a viable technology.  Until there's a demonstrator, we're not going to see this sort of funding.

You want my guess how long until we see such a demonstration?  Three months.  Six tops.

[Norm Hartnett]

FWIW

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/chinese-buildin.html

[GI-Thruster]

My trouble with this story is that it's a story at all.  This is clearly a defense technology.  If the Chinese were pursuing it with anything remotely resembling serious hope, I doubt we'd be hearing about it.  Lets remember, they don't have our separation between civil and military organization when it comes to aerospace spending and they don't pay for intellectual properties.  They just take them, so there's no reason for them to cooperate with Shawyer.  Sonny White and Paul March didn't need Shawyer's cooperation to do a Shawyer replication and it failed.  I think this is a red herring.
 
I'm sticking with my guns.  I think China probably has an MLT program that is at least 2 years in advance of ours.  The Chinese commitment to leadership in space would make that a no-brainer, since the MLT papers published a few years ago must have gotten their attention.  And they have money to burn.  Their engineers get paid less than our kids working the counter at Burger King.  With resources so cheap, I'd bet they have people working on Jack Sarfatti's Weightless Warp Drive notions and one has to suppose they hope Baker's gravity wave stuff can be adapted for propulsion.  They're already funding the communications end of things.
 
Before the fall of Rome, the Romans taught their barbarian cousins how to store food in silos so they wouldn't go hungry each winter and starve after each poor harvest.  That was the beginning of the end.  The empire fell from without.  But it also fell from within through lack of commitment to the future--lot like what we have here, now in the US.

[GI-Thruster]

Who was that masked man?!

Well, that was Paul March.

Paul, is there anywhere people here can look at your WarpStar paper or the Horizon's version?

We need to get as many homegrown engineers and physicists up to speed on your work as possible.

[GI-Thruster]

>This glow discharge kept us from reaching the internal E&M field conditions in the resonant cavity needed to match those reported by Shawyer by over two orders of magnitude, so we could not make any comment on the validity of Shawyer’s work from our failed experiment, and neither should you.

I agree.  My point was that you and Sonny were certainly able to follow Shawyer's work without his help and so can the Chinese.  If the Chinese were seriously involved in this work, we would not be reading about it on Wired.  It would be a Chinese "Black Project" we never hear about, just as I'm propsing is what is happening with the MLT.

[khallow]

GI-Thruster and Star-Drive, I believe my proposed experiment would be somewhat harder to do, but it would determine whether the device can generate linear thrust as opposed to torque.