Rakaydos

Perhaps not that exact metal box, but a standing wave energy gradient (resonator with uneven sides, resulting in greater energy desity on one end than the other without significant sustaining input) is not something that gets tested for often, and doesnt appear in nature much. If the effect is something that requires a standing energy gradient, what other expiriments do you know of that would have detected... whatever this effect would be if true?

It would require room temperature ablation, and they're running out of things to rule out as far as enviromental effects. Mach Effect generally IS considered technobabble- it's about as plausable as virtual plasma, but not as scientific sounding.

And this is the disconnect. You, K2 and N-las keep shouting his at the top of your lungs, without showing the problem. I've seen the "unicorns are more likely" explanation at least twice. But what does that mean? If the "impossible" theory was correct, what would happen to virtual particles around, say, a bar magnet?

Emotions are mostly a shortcut to bypass information paralisis. Anger and fear, for instance, are shortcuts optimized for the fight or flight reflex, essential to evolutionary survival. Love, likewise, is a procreationary and nuturing drive to ensure a similar genetic and instinctual framework is passed on. A computer, evolving in our modern society where predator-prey relationships are strictly metaphorical, is unlikely to generate the same shortcuts- it's emotions are likely to be more modernly rational than our own. (just as our own emotions were rational when we were plains apes hunting by chasing animals to heat exaustion)

Wasnt northstar using those same equations you say would be wrong, to explain why it would be more efficent than a photon drive? "Thrust = Mass Flow Rate * Exhaust Velocity *AND* E = 1/2 * m * v^2" Given how specific the circomstances for this has to be, I'd rather compare it to the invention of a Negative Index of Refraction- An impossible material made possible.

Can we accept that, if this drive really works at the reported power level, our understanding of physics is in error? With that as a premice, a technique to interact with virtual mass without realzing it in certian statistically unlikely situations seems least likely to break everything else we "know."

Then please stop. Nobody's talking about creating particles. we're talking about using the ones that are already statistically there. There's not actually an energy transfer in the black hole. 99+% of the time, both particles fall in or both particles escape. But if the aintparticle falls in first, the black hole is some immesurably tiny amount smaller and the particle escapes easier- conversely, if the particle falls in first, the black hole is more massive and more likely to absorb the antiparticle, canceling out the virtual particle growth. This tiny imbalance in favor of particles escaping over antiparticles is what causes hawking radiation, not "energy transfer" past an event horizon.

In Ian M Banks's Culture series, the Culture the series is named after (which is a backdrop in the novels, but not often the direct setting) is such a utopia, where choosing to live past 1000 years is considered tacky and unstylish, where peope do extreme sports without safty equipment or personality backups to prove they can, and where murder of someone who does have a backup gets you sent to counseling/therapy while the person you killed is recreated from their "last save."

I disagree with your first link- no needs does not lead to a lack of desires. In a World where noone has to work, what do you choose to do to give meaning to your existance? Explore the galaxy? Be renown for your sexual expertise? Write music for an instrument that has yet to be invented? Invent an instrument to play it? Master playing the instrument by hand?

But that's not what this drive is doing. Virtual particle pairs can be assumed to already exist, because that's what they do- start and stop existing. Therefore you do not need to create them out of energy, only to push off them. Their net energy is no longer zero, but it's not their mass energy either- it's the equal and opposite of the energy gained by the ship pushing off them. That's what the articles mean by "quasi-virtual particles"- they're not "real" yet, but their energy isnt zero, either. as these quasi-virtual particles intereact, they will eventually sort themselves into those tho have passed on their momentum to other particles and can resume not-existing, or those who have gained enough energy to become real.

Out of curosity, I tried out the "password" "WhatNow,BrownCow?" and got 234 trillion years. Simple sentances of real words are easy to remember, and difficult to crack.

So if imparting momentum on the virutal particals makes them real, what's the problem? You've spent energy making your ship move using reaction mass you didnt bring with you. The energy to propel the particle IS the energy to create it, because it already has a statistical chance to exist, and you're just ruining the balance of the universe by pushing off it.

Hmm... if we built a lunar lagrange elevator through the L2 point, how high would it have to be to simply drop a payload from the end, into a mars cycler trajectory?

Indeed. Something you Are, something you Have, and something you Know. So if someone steals your credit card number, they also need your face to actually use it.

Probably to test the ascent stage's reliability.

I think the focus on explosions and cartoony antics of the kerbals are a valuable way to soften the learning curve of a realistic space program. Noone wants to play "apollo 1 disaster investigation comittie" so by clearly marking failures with large, pretty explosions and simplifing the "messy part" of disaster investigation to an F3 window, Kerbal space program moves the focus way from the inevitable spaceflight tragedy you are enacting, and onto the more hopeful "Try, try again... but better this time."

Why would civiliaations appearing at the same time be evidence of time travelers, even if true?

Smaller designs can use the even-more-efficent Ion engine effectively

My bad, I meant intertial confinment. Fixed.

"Cold fusion" isnt exactly fusion, by my understanding. (it doesnt have elements fusing into new elements) Tokomak fusion seems to be one of the more advanced, but there are scale issues- ITER needs to be over 50' talll to keep enough superhot fusion plasma to sustain additional fusion. I know nothing about "polywell" fusion. Inertial Containment fusion has its own problems.

Thats the theory, but as FAR demonstrates, terminal velocity goes up faster than losing mass can raise your TWR. Most FAR designs back off to the next level of efficency, where adding more tanks increases payload to orbit more than adding more engines. this approach, as regex mentioned, generally aims for a 1.3 TWR t get as much payload to orbit for your expesive engines.

more like 60 or so. commercial fusion power has been 20 years away since the first fusion bombs.

The solar panels would work better. The motors to rotate them, however, would add to cost and maintanace, giving the panel system a lower lifetime-expected cost-efficency.

Depends if you count one of the mars probes doing interplanetary transfer-to-surface no-orbit aerobreaking/capture.

Space-based manufacture (using space-born or recycled materials, not just prefab components) would turn orbital solar arrays from impractically expensive and expensive to maintain, to "difficult to set up the infrastructure but easy to expand, reasonably priced for 20 hours of direct sunlight a day and reparable by the same means as they were constructed."