Author Topic: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application  (Read 1041653 times)

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #560 on: 09/14/2009 08:18 pm »
Anything beyond very modest mass fluctuations seem to me to be founded on very shaky ground. I read some of the paper presented by Woodward on his website, and it seemed very heavy in the "we did our math calculations before in some other paper and we get this 2nd or 3rd order effect," when physics often ignores 2nd or 3rd order effects. Many of the arguments are hand-waving, or appealing to obscure papers 50 years ago.

These relativistic gravity effects seem analogous to Magnetism, which is much weaker than electricity (which is its real source). It is easy to show how magnetism arises out of electrostatics with relativistic effects. Why is it so hard to show that these effects arise out of gravity, either with experiment or analytically? (Of course, general relativity is much harder than special relativity.) Gravity is very weak compared to electrostatic or even magnetic effects, so I find it difficult to believe that you're going to end up being able to manipulate it and get effects that are strong enough to be practical.

I expect a thorough and complete theoretical analysis of his work to show that it is no greater of an effect than the impulse imparted by a photon impinging on an object. In other words, I expect the power needed to drive such an effect to scale with frequency in the same way along with the effect.
« Last Edit: 09/14/2009 08:22 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline GI-Thruster

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #561 on: 09/14/2009 08:46 pm »
Well, I can respect the general tone of conservatism.  Certainly though, if you're saying you read part of one paper that referred to the basic theory in another, then called everything you read in part of a later paper "hand waving", I have to wonder about your basic methods.  I see this all the time in physics--it takes so much time and effort to thoroughly understand anything new that people generally apply laziness to their method and rationalize making what is essentially a hasty generalization (and hence the basis of logical fallacy).  It would be much more in keeping with the general endeavor of science to simply say "I'm not familiar enough to make a call."  I see this method everywhere, even in those who get paid by CIA to vet cutting edge technology.  I suppose if we can't expect those who get paid to vet physics to make a decent effort, we can't expect much from anyone.  And. . .we have the reason no one is paying attention to what could easily be the greatest breakthrough in physics in a century.  Laziness.

And no offense Robo, but if you had read for comprehension, you would certainly not have made the arguments you have directly above.  You're not showing any understanding of the theory, so what was the point in your reading?  This "hand waving" you refer to--how is it, it wasn't objected to by the real work-in-the-world physicists who did the peer review of this more than a decade ago?  They missed the hand waving while you observed it in a casual few minutes of your time?

I don't think so.  Honestly, you need to be a LOT more careful than to make such accusations of people who's works you have not read and do not understand.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #562 on: 09/14/2009 09:25 pm »
I'm not trying to peer-review this work, just stating my opinion.
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Online Lampyridae

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #563 on: 09/15/2009 12:28 am »
G/I thruster:

Please explain the difference between the diameter of a loop in Loop Quantum Gravity theory and QM's minimum Planck Length.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

"In physics, the Planck length, denoted, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616252(81)×10−35 meters.  It is a base unit in the system of Planck units.  The Planck length can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light in a vacuum, Planck's constant, and the gravitational constant.  Current theory suggests that one Planck length is the smallest distance or size about which anything can be known."



They are the same.  In QM, the claim is about what can be known.  In Loop theory, the claim is concerning existence itself.  In Loop theory, space is the place where existence can occur, meaning it can only occur within the loops and there is literally no "between" them or "outside" them.  So in Loop theory for example, if one presumes our big bang is the only big bang, then existence itself cannot occur outside the farthest reaches of the universe.  There is literally an outside where there are no loops, but there is no way for existence to occur there so "outside" the universe is literally not a place or a space.

In other words... we are in... The Matrix.

Quote
QM is talking only about knowledge.  Loop theory is making much stronger claims about existence itself.  More importantly, QM is not saying that space-time has this fabric of quantum loops.  In QM, we have the notion that space is this empty void that stuff like particles move around in.  In Loop theory, the void has structure and reality whether or not a particle is present.  This structure connects all things and can indeed be used to explain spooky action at a distance.  I'd bet if Einstein were with us today, he'd be a very strong proponent of Loop theory.

My understanding is that's what QM implies all along. With a bit more fuzziness and the nonzero possibility of turning into blue cheese along the way.

Online Lampyridae

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #564 on: 09/15/2009 12:48 am »
1. Anything beyond very modest mass fluctuations seem to me to be founded on very shaky ground. I read some of the paper presented by Woodward on his website, and it seemed very heavy in the "we did our math calculations before in some other paper and we get this 2nd or 3rd order effect," when physics often ignores 2nd or 3rd order effects. Many of the arguments are hand-waving, or appealing to obscure papers 50 years ago.

2. These relativistic gravity effects seem analogous to Magnetism, which is much weaker than electricity (which is its real source). It is easy to show how magnetism arises out of electrostatics with relativistic effects.

3. Why is it so hard to show that these effects arise out of gravity, either with experiment or analytically? (Of course, general relativity is much harder than special relativity.) Gravity is very weak compared to electrostatic or even magnetic effects, so I find it difficult to believe that you're going to end up being able to manipulate it and get effects that are strong enough to be practical.

1. Even modest mass fluctuations can be usable for thrust.

2. Bad analogy. Gravitomagnetism has nowt to do with this.

3. I don't think it's hard at all. Woodward and March have been demonstrating anomalous thrust with their pocket money.
« Last Edit: 09/15/2009 12:54 am by Lampyridae »

Online Lampyridae

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #565 on: 09/15/2009 01:12 am »
Polarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?

Sorry, not going to take a strawman structured to give the answer you want.
It's not a strawman. It's a real example of changing an em wavefront's direction that you can both simulate via computer and verify with an oscilloscope. No magic communication between wavefront elements required. It's a straightforward result of mindless, completely local wave propagation. We assign concepts like "reflection" to the result but nature couldn't care less.


The problem with non QEM explanations of refraction is that the ray of light must penetrate some distance into the second medium in order to know what it is index is, so it knows what direction to travel inside the second medium, yet photons change their vector, as far as can be determined, upon entry into the second medium, even though this should take at least a half a wavelength. However if you take a material with a thickness of less than half a wavelength and send photons through of long enough wavelengths, they still exhibit the full vector change expected of the mediums refraction index.

Also you are talking "conduction", plz be sure we are both discussing photons and not electrons. Dielectric materials deal in electrons. Refraction deals in photons.


Electrons also display similar behaviour - the double slit experiment works for them too.

Bizarrely enough, I watched an episode of Stargate Atlantis where they actually mentioned this very concept (QM refraction). I was very impressed by the highbrow stuff that the writers sneak in through Rodney's technobabble.

Offline Star-Drive

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #566 on: 09/15/2009 04:38 am »
1. Anything beyond very modest mass fluctuations seem to me to be founded on very shaky ground. I read some of the paper presented by Woodward on his website, and it seemed very heavy in the "we did our math calculations before in some other paper and we get this 2nd or 3rd order effect," when physics often ignores 2nd or 3rd order effects. Many of the arguments are hand-waving, or appealing to obscure papers 50 years ago.

2. These relativistic gravity effects seem analogous to Magnetism, which is much weaker than electricity (which is its real source). It is easy to show how magnetism arises out of electrostatics with relativistic effects.

3. Why is it so hard to show that these effects arise out of gravity, either with experiment or analytically? (Of course, general relativity is much harder than special relativity.) Gravity is very weak compared to electrostatic or even magnetic effects, so I find it difficult to believe that you're going to end up being able to manipulate it and get effects that are strong enough to be practical.

1. Even modest mass fluctuations can be usable for thrust.

2. Bad analogy. Gravitomagnetism has nowt to do with this.

3. I don't think it's hard at all. Woodward and March have been demonstrating anomalous thrust with their pocket money.

Lampy & Robobeat:

"3. I don't think it's hard at all.  Woodward and March have been demonstrating anomalous thrust with their pocket money."

The reason that we have demonstrated up to milli-Newton plus forces with proof of principle M-E devices using our "pocket change" is that while gravitational forces on a per atom basis are ~40 orders of magnitude weaker than electric charges, there is no plus or minus gravitational mass or energy charges as there is in electrostatics.  Gravitational mass/energy charges do NOT subtract from each other as they do in electrostatics over large distances.  They only add.  So when the gravitational charge of the universe's ~1x10^80+ atoms plus Dark Energy are summed over the volume of the casually connected universe, these additive gravitational forces become what we call “inertial forces” that are proportional to the applied local force, have the opposite sign, and are instantaneous as well.  This is not supposition on our part for it is contained in Newton’s three laws of motion for any to see if you bother to look for it, and it is demonstrated and verified every day when an object moves relative to the distant stars.  It seems that a lot of folks miss this one simple fact and that is what living in a Machian universe brings to the table.  And while you are correct in saying that what Woodward has found in his Mach-Effect is a secondary time derivative effect of the primary inertial force, his M-E derivation and our existing experimental data indicates that these “secondary” transient inertial forces can be as large or larger than the primary inertial forces under the appropriate extreme dE/dt and bulk acceleration or da/dt (jerk) conditions.  And that is what we are trying to harness in our M-E thruster work. 
Star-Drive

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #567 on: 09/15/2009 01:36 pm »
Well, Star-drive, I am glad that you guys are seeing good results, even though I don't quite accept the theoretical aspects. I hope you guys are able to find a useful effect.

When I look at the competing theories for the origin of inertia/gravity (Machian vs Quantum vacuum), I am more persuaded by the Quantum vacuum effect. The Machian idea seems to much to rely on non-local effects for my tastes as a physicist, and the quantum vacuum people do a better job of making the physics understandable--although both approaches are controversial in the physics community and currently have their flaws.
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Online Lampyridae

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #568 on: 09/15/2009 11:32 pm »
Well, I must admit I'm more persuaded by the Machian. There is some (slight) evidence for action-at-a-distance - such as the post-Big Bang inhomogeneities. QVF, I can accept but the issue for me is the reference frame for this medium. How or why is it at rest? Etc.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #569 on: 09/16/2009 12:10 am »
Well, I must admit I'm more persuaded by the Machian. There is some (slight) evidence for action-at-a-distance - such as the post-Big Bang inhomogeneities. QVF, I can accept but the issue for me is the reference frame for this medium. How or why is it at rest? Etc.

Yeah, that the qvf ref frame is always at rest seems odd (and illogical) to me, too, but quantum vacuum fluctuations are already appealed to in relatively mainstream physics as explanations for a wide variety of physical phenomenon, and that would also have to act the same in all inertial ref frames, so that's kind of why a quantum vacuum source of inertia seems more plausible than a Machian source. I still don't completely buy either explanations, though.

EDIT: And it OUGHT to be at rest if it's true at all, since many experiments have shown that there isn't an "ether" frame that we are moving with respect to.
« Last Edit: 09/16/2009 02:21 am by Robotbeat »
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Offline Star-Drive

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #570 on: 09/16/2009 04:11 am »
Well, I must admit I'm more persuaded by the Machian. There is some (slight) evidence for action-at-a-distance - such as the post-Big Bang inhomogeneities. QVF, I can accept but the issue for me is the reference frame for this medium. How or why is it at rest? Etc.

Yeah, that the qvf ref frame is always at rest seems odd (and illogical) to me, too, but quantum vacuum fluctuations are already appealed to in relatively mainstream physics as explanations for a wide variety of physical phenomenon, and that would also have to act the same in all inertial ref frames, so that's kind of why a quantum vacuum source of inertia seems more plausible than a Machian source. I still don't completely buy either explanations, though.

EDIT: And it OUGHT to be at rest if it's true at all, since many experiments have shown that there isn't an "ether" frame that we are moving with respect to.

Robotbeat & Lampy:

There is alternate way to view the M-E and that is through the lens of Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations controlled by standard neutral plasma hydrodynamics, which is being pursued by a local friend of mine by the name of Dr. Harold (Sonny) White who has a PhD in plasma physics from Rice University and who also works at NASA/JSC.  I'm attaching a STAIF-2007 presentation of his describing his early thoughts on this topic, but we've yet been able to obtain any substantiating experimental data for his QVF/MHD conjecture, so it is still very speculative until his latest test article gets its run in the force pendulum later on this year.  In the long haul we will no doubt have to merge the GRT based M-E with the QM based QVF/MHD world view into a quantum gravity theory that experimental data has verified, but until then we have to use both of these approaches to guide our experimental studies and hope that luck will be on our side in the interim. 
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Offline Cinder

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #571 on: 09/23/2009 02:49 pm »
I'm curious if there's any ballpark range for how much such MLTs would cost to manufacture, from lightweight civilian to the other end of the spectrum of applications.  What would be the cost of the lowest range of SSTO-capable MLT-powered single or two-seater craft; or at least what would the rough range of the propulsion systems' cost be for such a lightweight craft, once manufacturing economies of scale came in effect?

Is the MLTs' expected fabrication well known enough to make such an estimate?

Thanks.
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Offline GI-Thruster

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #572 on: 09/23/2009 06:40 pm »
I think it's way too early to say, Cinder.  Could be these MLT's and/or UFG's will be able to use very light, cheap materials such as electrostrictive elastomers like 3M glue, or could be we need exotic single crystals in large pieces that cost $5k/cc.  Could be many other things.

Right now, the most expensive issue is the power systems, Z matching and feedback as the systems warm up and the Z changes.  We don't have any reactive systems but they're commonplace and given the resources, that engineering is well understood.  Once you start to do more than research, your costs for such things drop through the floor so that's all good news.

But if we find that we have to have laser sintered PMN-PT diffusion bonded to an exotic liquid metal backplate, then the cost of such a thing will not come down until we're manufacturing these by the thousands. . .so it's impossible to answer your question until we know what real prototypes would look like.  We're still doing pure research; not even looking at commercial systems yet.  It's possible the PZT, PTFE, BaTiO3, etc. being used today will be in prototypes tomorrow, but it's just as likely we'd need single crystals or something else as of yet untried.

No way to know. . .yet.
« Last Edit: 09/23/2009 06:45 pm by GI-Thruster »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #573 on: 09/23/2009 08:14 pm »
What is the power needed for a certain thrust?
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Offline Cinder

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #574 on: 09/23/2009 08:47 pm »
Thanks Thruster.

Robotbeat, did you look at the papers posted by StarDrive?  There's a pretty fair detailing of experimental and projected specs.
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #575 on: 09/23/2009 09:24 pm »
What is the projected input power its projected thrust? That's all I want to know.
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Offline Star-Drive

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #576 on: 09/24/2009 04:08 am »
What is the projected input power its projected thrust? That's all I want to know.

In my most reliable M-E experiment, the Mach-2MHz MLT, the input power was ~7.0 watts RF at 3.8 MHz that yielded a ~5.0 milli-Newton thrust for a thrust to power figure of merit of 7.14x10^-4 Newton/Watt.  And the M-E theory predicts that as the thrust is increased by increasing the M-E drive's operating frequency and voltage, the efficiency of the M-E drive should go up as well as shown in the attached slides originally from my STAIF-2007 WarpStar-1 presentation.  Will we ever reach this hoped for 1.0 Newton/Watt efficiency that the M-E theory indicates may be obtainable and that I used for my STAIF-2007 paper?  Perhaps, but it may take decades of material science research into capacitor dielectrics optimized for M-E drive applications, just like it took close to a century to perfect the internal combustion piston engine for the automobile industry.  Advancements like this don't come for free...
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Online Lampyridae

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #577 on: 09/25/2009 01:00 am »
What is the projected input power its projected thrust? That's all I want to know.

In my most reliable M-E experiment, the Mach-2MHz MLT, the input power was ~7.0 watts RF at 3.8 MHz that yielded a ~5.0 milli-Newton thrust for a thrust to power figure of merit of 7.14x10^-4 Newton/Watt.  And the M-E theory predicts that as the thrust is increased by increasing the M-E drive's operating frequency and voltage, the efficiency of the M-E drive should go up as well as shown in the attached slides originally from my STAIF-2007 WarpStar-1 presentation.  Will we ever reach this hoped for 1.0 Newton/Watt efficiency that the M-E theory indicates may be obtainable and that I used for my STAIF-2007 paper?  Perhaps, but it may take decades of material science research into capacitor dielectrics optimized for M-E drive applications, just like it took close to a century to perfect the internal combustion piston engine for the automobile industry.  Advancements like this don't come for free...

For comparison, 3x10^-10 Watt / Newton for photon drives. A leap of about 6 orders of magnitude. Even with the current efficiencies, with beamed power it's a viable drive. A 1GW microwave beam could push a 7 tonne payload at 1G. Mass to thrust and cap lifetime is the issue in this case.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #578 on: 09/25/2009 01:52 am »
For comparison, 3x10^-10 Watt / Newton for photon drives. A leap of about 6 orders of magnitude. Even with the current efficiencies, with beamed power it's a viable drive. A 1GW microwave beam could push a 7 tonne payload at 1G. Mass to thrust and cap lifetime is the issue in this case.

A 1G thruster can take over from the core of a LV.  Secondary thrusters will also be needed to accelerate the vehicle.  At say 1.1G the secondary thrusters are no longer needed.  Even at 0.25G such a drive will reduce the time to Mars.
 

Offline qraal

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #579 on: 09/26/2009 09:54 am »
1 W/1 N would be quite a space-drive. But to do useful propulsion it just has to beat the competition. Consider VASIMR - at full throttle the drive gets 1 N/125 kW. And that's just jet-power, the actual electrical efficiency is worse. If the MLT can get 1 N/kW and keep that up for weeks, then it'll be pure "Buck Rogers" between here and Mars.

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