Rakaydos

AoL CDs.

"Vertical velocity gets burned by gravity, horizontal velocity is yours to keep" If we're ignoring aerobreaking, wouldnt the best approach be to find the steepest gravity well, and warp to the point as close to it as your ship design allows, such that your momentum is straight up? So, you emerge from interstellar warp in the solar corona and "fall" straight up. To bend your course to match your target, dont be EXACTLY straight up- the horizontal momentum you'll keep as you bleed the vertical.

Orion is basically a solar sail that brings it's own sun. Of the energy directed at the pusher plate, 100% of it pushes the craft foreward, plus call it 50%+ of the rebound energy. Having the shape charge direct 50% of the bomb's power at the pusher plate lets you get almost 100% of the bombs power.

I read a varation where they put a fusion rocket engine on Uranus, fed by the hydrogen atmosphere, and gravity-tractored earth into a differnt orbit. Because you cant beat a gas giant for fuel fraction.

Do pre-existing subassembilies count?

One of the hypothetical scenerios was "The sun is being turned into Strange Matter" How would you survive without a sun?

Orion is the best thiing we have, but it isnt enough. Not if we're going beyond Proxima Centauri or Barnard Star. The fuel fraction (of shape charge nuclear warheads) will stretch the limit of nuclear material on earth. Antimatter, we'd have to manufacture it ourselves, but it's energy density puts even atomic power to shame. And we STILL woud need a solar sail booster-break.

By the standard of "nobody saw what wold happen", I would posit Personal Computers/personal electronics/Smartphones as a singularity. Combined with the creation of Social Media, we basicaly have given anyone who can make a monthly payment the ability to know what other people are saying and doing, anywhere in the world.

That sounds interesting. I remember hearing that people working on quantum computing were working on ways of "gaming the system" to get good probabilities out of statistically random events... is it plausable to "improve the odds" of a virtual particle chain in the same way?

So if you give it a little energy, but not enough, it vanishes with the energy? ...I get the feeling theres something being left out.

So what happens if you dont put in enough energy, is my question.

Antimatter and laser sails are pretty much our only options, and it'll take both, not just one.

So, if virtual force carriers are eliminated as a working medium, what about the rest of the Standard Model? What happens to a virtual Proton that was struck by a single real photon- not enough energy to turn it's virtual mass real?

Jumping for a moment to Dr White's OTHER pet project.... could you use the properties of virtual particles to "prove" that there is a ring around your ship that has negative mass? (like the black hole example posted earlier, where the free-flying no-longer-virtual particle "proves" the virtual antiparticle must have had negative mass when it fell into the black hole) - - - Updated - - - ...you know what would be silly? if the increased virtual particle production was producing (among other things) enough gravitons on the foreward end of the device to pull the device foreward. (gets lynched by the physisists in the audience)

This was a the top of the page. No answers yet?

They why dont you explain what is wrong, rather than make analigies with unicorns and banannas. Because they really .... people off.

This is why people want it renamed after a certian other Ian M Banks spaceship... General Service Vehical "Only Slightly Bent"

Not even talking about the EM drive at this point, but... Why cant "recoil picked up by the Quantum Vacuum" be expressed in the strong or weak nuclear force? Is it that "infinite range" stipulation? Why is that a limit? If it -can- be expressed as nuclear forces... what would that even look like?

I'm pretty sure we've both established about a bazillion times that making them real defeats the purpose of the excercice, as it becomes just a photon drive/less efficent photon drive. Thank you for the new information about the range limit of massive virtual particles. And the lack of unicorns in your explanantion. :/ Since massive virtual particles are the only ones with the potential for theoretical higher-than-photon efficiencies, if I understand Northstar right, then even my earlier thought expiriment doesnt have the range to complete a momentum transfer from one end of the device to the other. On the other hand, it makes the tiny red and blue circles shown on Dr. White's diagramms make more sence. How long can a massive virtual particle remain "around" without becoming real? is it on the same order as the resonant cavity's oscillation? (wiki suggests 2.45 gigahertz as a common microwave frequency)

Revising this thought expiriment: weakly interacting particles. Of the virtual particals created by the energy gradient, an unknown percentage pass through the front of the device without interacting. These are ignored. Of the ones that do interact, an unknown percentage stop at the back wall of the device, canceling out the momentum as per the earlier expiriment. These are also ignored. What about the rest? Is the experiment modified by having a lead (or neutronium, or black hole) wall behind the device to absorb the momentum? Does it matter how far the wall is away from the device, or can you fire it up and hope there's enough interstellar hydrogen between here and Andromeda to absorb your momentum?

I would think that, at least, you would get an effect as you start the device (as the flow, virtual or air, hits one side first) and a canceling effect as you stop the device. In operation, however, continius flow would cancel out the effect. in both directions. Edit: Hmm... but what would the forces look like, hypothetically, if you turned it on, then swung it around 180. (then presumably shut it off) Common sence suggests resisting torque- would that cancel the momentum change?

So, to revise the thought expiriment, floating a U-shaped pipe with a tiny fan on each end, blowing down one end/up the other, would not move, despite air moving horizontally in the bend of the pipe. This seems like an expiriment doable at home, with the hypothosized result different from the "common sence" result of the pipe moving.

I would think it would be comparable to floating a curved dish on water, then blowing (straight down, no momentum bias- this represents the particles spawning with no momentum) on one rim in such a way that the air returned straight up at the opposite rim(vanishing once momentum is spent)- the fact that it traveled from one rim to the opposite one conveys momentum even though the pressure on each rim is equal. Can you explain why that doesnt happen in a microscopic scale?

Well, lets try this one: the virtual particles are created (virtual) on one end of the cavity. (because of the energy gradient, this is more likely to happen on one end of the cavity than the other) They interact with that end of the cavity, picking up a momentum debt as it pushes the craft foreward. It then travels to the other end of the cavity, interacts and pays off it's momentum debt, stopping the craft and becoming fully virtual again, vanishing in a puff of not-real. But because the particle had momentum energy as it traveled the length of the cavity (again, this is normally an omidirectional effect and thus self-canceling- only the energy gradient of the asymmetic resonator creates a directional bias) the cavity itself gaines an opposite momentum until the second interaction stopped it. Repeated for every virtual particle to spawn in the high energy end (minus the virtual particles that spawn in the low energy end, that convey reverse momentum) this becomes a measurable effect, despite relying on virtual intereactions.

Can you explain furthur? Specifically, the standing-wave aspect, as it applies to "Every single particle accelerator experiment (ever)" And please dont have a unicorn in your explanation. I'm tired of unicorns.