KerikBalm

"And yes, the immediate response pretty much rules out thermally induced air currents" Well, I suppose that depends on what you mean by air currents and immediate. I don't know many details about the test or the data. Convection within the test chamber would take a while. However, heating within the "resonating" chamber (its my understanding that one end is open), could essentially act like a rocket, heat the propellant, the propellant escapes and produces thrust, the response would be pretty immediate. Since I don't have access to the design schematics or the data, I'm just speculating here. If they made a theory about how it works, requiring these slots, and the presence of the slots has no effect, that is good evidence that their theory is wrong, that their explanation is wrong. Then there is still the torque, for which we don't have an explanation for... An appeal to ignorance may lead to the supposition that there is a very similar effect to the theorized one, but we just don't understand the details... but as I previously said, we have equal evidence for any number of explanations, including pixie dust - ie, None.

"The null-test device wwas not intended as the experimental control. The man who invented the Cannae drive (named Fetta) developed a mathematical theory for how to design the engine. It relied upon these radial slots in the rim of the interior of the cavity. His math stated without them no thrust could be generated. The normal Cannae drive had the slots, the null-test device did not." Its obvious that it was designed as a control, the way they describe it is exactly as a control. This is an after the fact declaration - your control doesn't work, say its not the control! problem solved. "So basically what happened was that they had one engine that was supposed to work, it did. They had another engine that was supposed to fail, it failed. Then they had another engine that if it worked proved that Fetta's models on the engine were flawed, it worked." No, they did not have an "engine" that was supposed to fail and then did fail, they had a resistor. The resistor provided no thrust... whoppedy do, thats not a very good control.

I don't agree with this statement. We have no examples of a Eukaryote without mitochondria (or similar organelles derived from them, ie mitosomes and hydrogenosomes), or of a "Eukaryote"/Archea with symbiotic alphaproteobacteria. We have no small brained bipedal apes. We have no more non-avian therepods, we have just 2 examples of jawless fish, just a handful of examples of non-tetrapod sarcopterygian fish. Something retaining the ancestral form is only retained if the ancestral niche has been continuously maintained, and a form was viable in that niche without going extinct. There are still fish in the sea after tetrapods evolved not because of some conservation of a primitive form, but because of conservation of the niche for "fish". But tetrapods evolved from coastal sarcopterygian, and those are all gone, out competed by the actinopterygians. If a new, possibly more complex, organism evolves and outcompetes the old, the old is gone... bye bye. #1) We have plenty of examples of RNA genomes * viral in nature, or intracellular and alternates between RNA and DNA, as in the case of retrotransposons) #2) What we developed in a lab used what we found in nature as a starting point #3) No such environment is available due to *extreme competition from bateria and archea *ubiquitous RNAses that digest RNA, which if you work in a molecular/cellbiology/biochemistry lab, you'll know is a major problem when working with RNA, and to have RNAse free conditions, you basically need sterile conditions #4) Absensce of evidence is not evidence of absence - we haven't even identified most of the cellular species on Earth. Just taking samples of seawater and sequencing the ribosomal RNA yields truly astounding numbers of sequences indicating vast numbers of undescribed species that we haven't isolated. For all we know, a self replicating RNA might be among those, as the catalytic part of a ribosome is RNA. Given all the undescribed nucleic acids we can find floating around, we may have an acellular self replicating RNA population for all we know. Such a thing would be very difficult to show, given the RNAse problems. To reconstitute the collection in vitro would be great, but there are far too many permutations of the RNA combinations to try, and the conditions to try, that without some better "hints" to constrain the search... it will have to remain a "maybe" #5) The genetic code is not "universal", we observe variations on it here on Earth, the most distantly related lineages have the most differences. Given that the code would have become fixed at about the time you would start encapsulating protein synthesis machinery, these differences in lineages strongly imply that Earth life is descended from a cross section of the first cellular life. If a single species of bacteria were to have landed here from mars, it would likely have colonized the planet and adapted to outcompete any new arrivals before any new arrivals came, and we would not observe these differences in the genetic code. These genetic code differences, to me, show that Earth has a diversity that started when the very first cell started. I highly doubt that if cellular life started elsewhere from RNA precursors, that we would be seeing the differences in the geneti code that we see today. How does Occam's razor apply here, it favors the simplest explanation. 1) Life started on earth, but the acellular replicating precursor is not around any more/we can't find an example 2) Life started elsewhere, then came to earth, but the acellular replicating precursor did not come and we can't find any example of new life arriving from space I'm choosing 1) as the simplest explanation that Occam's razor favors Well, there is another possible Origin... Venus... Its likely Venus had oceans, in fact, it seems likely there was a breif time period when all the terrestrial planets except Mercury had oceans. Venus's didn't last long, they were disappearing as Earth's were forming... but the progressively worsening conditions on venus may have favored the formation of extremophiles that could survive the journey. Also, some theories on abiogenesis focus on thermodynamic properties + that nucleic acids absorb strongly in the UV range, of rely on thermal cycling (as used in modern PCR) that requires temperatures to be high enough to separate two strands -likely during the day- (life now has an enzyme to do that, we don't use it in the lab, we just heat and cool for each round of replication) and then cool down enough for annealing again -likely during the night- These "light based" explanations look stronger and stronger the closer one gets to the sun... If life started on Venus before its oceans boiled off... well, I don't know how we'd ever find evidence of that.. I'll just say, its plausible - but due to the observations about the genetic code, I'm sticking with life starting right here on Earth.

Yea, a SSTO launcher is not neccessarily (and probably is not), a reusable launcher. You could have a rocket with a ~25:1 Full:Empty mass ratio, and get it into orbit as a single stage - but its going to be so flimsy that it won't survive re-entry. The space shuttle was mostly re-usable, I'm quite disappointed with how its economics worked out, I still think a similar concept could be done more economically. Maybe ditch the winged vehicle idea in favor of standard capsules, heat shields, and parachutes. Maybe add another, recoverable, stage, and ditch that single use, massive external tank.

Much like playing the lotto, you should weigh the benefits of success against the probability of success. I would *love* for these claims to be real. It would be so darn awseome... but... so would winning the lotto... and I don't expect to be lucky enough to win the lotto. I hope its real. I doubt its real.

A better idea than using "conventional" propellants to keep your rotating slingshot thing in orbit, would be to use very high ISP propellants, and beamed power, like a VASMIR engine keeping your slingshot in orbit. It would allow you to "store" the thrust from a High ISP, low thrust device, and periodicaly execute a high thrust maneuver. But I'd rather have a giant space-gun

We don't have fossils or modern analogs (of course, what constitutes and analogue is subjective) of the oldest bacteria. All we have for the first ~2 billion years of life is chemical evidence, or apparently fossilized biofilms that don't tell us anything about the cellular or subcellular structure. We do have traces of the "primordial precursor that could have spontaneously formed in the primordial ooze" in that we have shown nucleotides can form abiotically, and that we've identified RNA ribozymes that can copy RNA templates, and "evolved" them in the lab into even better replicators. I see plenty of evidence showing its plausible for life to have originated here on Earth. I also see plenty of evidence showing its plausible for there ot be, basically, local panspermia. However, the life that can survive harsh conditions has a number of adaptations (for example, spore formation can be rather complicated) - during the earlier times, when bombardment was heavier, we don't know how well the early life would have handled an extended trip through space - and when I consider how different the environment will be where it lands... for example, you can't take some bacteria you identified under an arctic ice sheet, and then place it in a hot spring and expect it to survive... I have my doubts. Occam's razor suggests to me that Earth-life started on Earth.

Have you looked into the asparagus staging tutorials?

Well, if you try to land a rover near the intersection of 3 or more biomes, then you've got a bit of driving to do on the ground. For "fun" I'll often land a roving science lab, and I additionally have to go collect data from goo cans and such. I drop science lab rovers through duna too, and when I get on the ground, I need to collect and store all the instrument data I took while descending through the atmosphere, before using them again for the surface. I agree with you on the tech tree- I don't want to have to go to Laythe to get docking ports! Doing interplanetary missions is often hard enough (with Duna not being all that hard), doing it with limited parts is annoying. "Oops, need to go back because I didn't unlock the grav scan" "Well, I don't have large diameter parts, so I'll just make a high part count craft that lags my computer" "Hmmm, it seems I don't have the technology to make a metal girder, must go to Eeloo without it!" I'd rather see getting data as something that causes you to get more funding/reputation.

Sometimes, yes I can The notion of Panspermia is fine, particularly in a limited form such as within a solar system (ie earth to mars and vice versa transfers). What I'm dreading, is that this gets over-hyper as "proof", and then incorporated into increasingly pseudo-scientific claims, that will also then claim to be "confirmed" I've already had to keep crud like claims of life originating 10 billion years ago and getting to Earth via panspermia off of wikipedia (recently, I discovered that claim was spread and repeated on half a dozen biology related pages).

Except a whole lot of reaction mass, of course. I don't think that is true. Quite a few launchers can be SSTO with a tiny payload. Its when you try to make them reusable that you run into problems. I seem to recall hearing that there were some test of launchers that basically ended up being SSTO with no payloads. More generally, this thread is about a reusable transfer vehicle to Mars... not a new concept. I still think something "shuttle like" would probably be the most cost effective way of getting into orbit -> uses staging, but parts are recoverable. SpaceX seems to be getting close.

That is... weird... I wouldn't say they are living in space. I'd say they are still capable of reviving after having been in space. Air currents lifting sea plankton into the upper atmosphere-> fine, documented, no problem... but into space? I've heard of high energy solar wind/rays heating the upper atmosphere and allowing some gasses to escape... but carying plankton to space (not neccessarily orbit/escape) Could incoming Meteors somehow kickoff some atmosphere, with microbes whisked away along with it, into space. Electrical phenomenom? But then... if these things were just given Apo's at the ISS's altitude, and its smacking into them like bugs on a windshield... even for something that small, I wonder if they'd survive smashing into the ISS at 8 km/sec. I'd say I'd question if the plankton could have got there during launch/rocket ascent (when its still below orbital velocity, and in the uppermost levels of the atmosphere) Also... now I will have to prepare for new rounds of people spouting off panspermia hype... its coming, I know it.

I saw it as an appeal to ridicule, but I suppose that is open to interpretation. His phrasing "how's that supposed to work", in the context, made it seem like he was ridiculing the idea. The pixie dust was not a strawman, it was perhaps an appeal to ridicule. I will note I wasn't presenting it(or at least did not intend to) as an equivalent theory. I was making a statement on the evidence we have. Perhaps a more nuanced statement would be something like: "at the moment, we have equal evidence for the explanations of: heating of air, interaction with the magnetic field, quantum virtual plasma interactions, and pixie dust - that is to say, we have no evidence." In this case I certainly would not intent the first 2 explanations to be considered equally plausible to the 3rd, or the 4th. The pixie dust comment was merely to emphasize that we have NO evidence for the cause of the torque - its to emphasize that these results do not constitude evidence that we can make reactionless drives. "pixie dust is also impossible" - maybe, maybe not, if our universe is a simulation, the rules can change quite durastically, and most will agree its possible that our world is a simulation, the various programmers and users would be in effect dieties and magical creatures. I'll rank this as possible, but given the lack of evidence, I'm not going to start believing it is true. I hope you do not include me in that group. I don't want to imply that it is heating of air, or the torque is due to magnetic field interaction like the needle on a compas.. or whatever. What I do want to do, and I hoped it was clear based upon my first post (I think it was my first, the reference to arsenic life), is stop people from jumping to unlikely conclusions and spreading undue hype. People jumping to conclusions results in essentally "lies" being repeated over and over again after they've been shown to be untrue, because the initial astounding claim gets hype, and the refutation is never picked up by the laypeople. We still have people (on these forums no less), that think we've found bacteria that replace P with As in their DNA, for example. We still have movies that repeat this "humans only use 10% of their brain" BS (I'm looking at you, Lucy and Limitless!). It annoys me, greatly. I see it as evidence of how easily people will believe BS on faulty logic and bad evidence, which then transfers over to politics and such (oh help me, I almost confirmed Godwin's Law! I was tempted to bring up... never mind) - I think a lot of the world's problems are cause by this sort of irrational jumping to conclusions. Don't jump to conclusions. We have a device, it produces a torque on the measuring device when electricity is supplied. Its probably a pretty standard explanation, but some people think it may be because of something extraordinary. So far, there is no extraordinary evidence. Be patient, wait for more evidence, don't start making extraordinary claims now! To a lesser extent: lacking extraordinary evidence, and given that cheaper tests can be done to get some evidence, I do not support expending a lot of resources on a more expensive test when a cheap one should suffice.

Just a guesstimate based upon the amount of "unutilized" resources that are present in a biosphere. The water per capita here on earth, for example, is much higher than the attemps at making closed ecosystems (which never quite worked when scaled up). You don't just need to add enough water to irrigate sufficient crops as in some sort of closed underground hydroponics facility, but you need to basically saturate the environment with enough water to get standing pools of water + enough water vapor that you have condensation and rain and a functioning hydrological cycle. You don't need to just heat a closed habitat to above freezing, but large swaths of the entire planet... etc. It just seems inefficient to me, my guess is it would be very inefficient if the sole purpose is to create habitabe space for humans. As to losses... the numbers on how many tons of various compounds Earth loses to space per time unit are staggering, and Earth's got a larger radius, more gravity, and magnetic field. Also significant recycling of the crust... Losses on mars would be so high that I think its unfair to require 100% reclamation of some closed habitat. A closed habitat with large stockpiles of resources would lose resources much slower than mars would lose resources if terraformed. That said... I would like to see some planet terraformed (ideally one that doesn't have its own life already/is not suitable for life already). I do place a lot of value on earth's biosphere, it would be great to have a functioning "copy" of it somewhere else - from the fish in the sea, the arhea and bacteria in the hot springs and ice, jungles, forests, plants that survive in arid conditions, ants, spider, snakes, etc... but for that, we really need a copy of Earth. If you got mars up to 1 atm, you'd still have the basically unsolvable problem of low gravity, which would cause many many species to rapidly evolve into different forms. Although that would still be pretty cool, I do have more fondness for Earth's current forms. I won't deny the coolness factor... but... I think mars is just too small and old... if we could somehow move venus out to its orbit, smash them together (and then throw ceres on it for good measure + added water), then we might have something

- Modify the last part to read: "other's arguments by pointing out the strawman arguments" , and it would be correct. One can declare anything they wish, but unless they provide reasoning to back it up, then they probably face the logical fallacy of an unsupported assertion. My assertions were supported. I did address his points, I pointed out the strawman claims and explained the distinction between what I said, and his strawmen. I provided an example of heating air producing thrust, and how its conceivable that the "EM drive" could produce thrust in a similar same way. Do you wish for me to elaborate on his burden of proof fallacy? He is asking me for proof that it could be heating of air producing the thrust as one of multiple explanations, but offers no proof when he implies this shows a a violation of conservation of momentum. I thought it was implied that "the effect" you were referring to was one of the ones that was claimed by the builders - or at least one which violates the conservation of momentum, as it was a followup to my post containing the statements: "The test was not performed in a vacuum, thus heating of air is a potential source of the thrust So, the deal is that there is a lot of jumping to conclusions and media hype, and that this thing still probably doesn't work. " I don't know what other effect you could be referring to, please elaborate on what you meant. I did not intend to misrepresent your views. Even if that was not your view, my point still stands that its not evidence for *any* explanation for the force, and regardless of what effect you were referring to, the pixie dust has equal weight. Your "to be fair" comment certainly seemed like an appeal to ignorance to get us to accept the premise that this might be evidence of a reactionless drive, hence my need to counter with a "to be fair" comment of my own. Very well, I would modify the statement "does not necessarily operate as the theory that was used to design the fail model suggests." to "must necessarily not operate as the theory that was used to design the fail model suggests." By the way, asymetric air heating does not operate as the "theory" of Shawyer and his ilk suggest.

A place to live and not "having all of our eggs in one basket" that can be accomplished without terraforming - so the question still stands... why terraform? Mars, as a terraformed world can never be independent of extra-martian resources. It is 1/10th the mass of Earth, its simply too small, to support a thick enough atmosphere for any significant length of time (in the geologic timescale). What is the point in making a home for billions of people, if it begins deteriorating as soon as its ready, and will be quite harsh again withing a couple millenia? They don't, I'm simply speaking of prioritizing and making the most of resources. Sending truly massive amounts of liquid/gaseous resources (hydrogen, nitrogen, water, methane, etc) to mars is going to waste truly massive amounts of liquid/gaseous resources. When making living space or refugia, there are much more efficient uses of resources

Why would you try to maintain a terraformed planet? If it was sustainable on its own, its a good "lifeboat" in case something happens on/to Earth - but if Mars is doomed if humanity falters on Earth, what is the point? All those resources would be better spent making Earth more like the paradise it should be, rather than turning an unihabitable place into a barely habitable place - or securing Humanities hold on space with asteroid colonies, colonies on titan, etc... which could include underground colonies on mars, sure, why not. But terraforming it to something barely habitable, why? If we had a time machine and could go back 4 billion years and seed it with plant life, we'd probably get a good billion years out of it, but its too late now. Too much lost to space, too much trapped in its solidified mantle. If there is any internal heat left, its far too deep for any nutrient cycling to take place. While theire may be refugia for very hardy life, for our purposes, that planet is dead. The water under the ice on Europa and Enceledus would be more easily made habitable.

So you spend a couple millenia terraforming it, and then in 10k years, its uninhabitable again. Mars is simply too small. Its core has gone cold (relatively speaking, as mars no longer has a molten mantle like Earth's), meaning no recycling of the crust/various other things, which is due to Mar's low mass/not enough radioactive elements in its core. Its low mass also means that even if you give it an atmosphere thick enough for us, it will lose it again in short order. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape You can have a cold, thick atmosphere, but you can't have a warm one without more mass. Also note that CO2 is much heavier than H20, Water escapes an atmosphere much more readily than CO2. In KSP, I like that they note that Duna's atmosphere is enriched in heavier elements. Mars is not suitable for long term habitability. Once it cooled, it died (if it ever had life). Our resources would be better spent developing what we need to live in space(asteroid and mining of moons for example) and expand to other stars

Please provide the source, I am curious to know if this is the case. Of course, as I mentioned in a much earlier post, I'm still curious if the force could be explained by interaction with earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field is already used to produce torque on spacecraft to desaturate reaction wheels and such, and they were actually measuring torque, which they attributed to thrust

Your logical fallacy is: Strawman argument. I never claimed there was no thrust, I simply state there is no evidence for your explanation of the thrust. Your logical fallacy is: Strawman argument, Burden of Proof & false statements. Strawman: I never claimed it is thrust being produced by heating of air - simply that it is a possible explanation, and that there is not more evidence for the other explanation than for this explanation. Strawman: the christmas ornament thing. - ties into the false statement/generalization and burden of proof fallacy with the statement "heating air" doesn't produce thrust" There are ample theoretical, practical, empirical, working demonstrations ofthrust being produced by asymetric heating of air. Project Pluto certainly doesn't prove an EM thruster works. This EM drive had an energy supply, air as a potential reaction mass, and a cavity where the air had access and where the heating from the energy input was focused. There is a solid theoretical basis for that functioning as a thruster, similar to as in many electric drives that use microwaves to heat the exhaust gas, for example. Your logical fallacy: Appeal to authority, False/misleading statements The end of the story (for now) is there are plausible explanations to explain the thrust that do not violate conservation of momentum, and no evidence for the explanation that does violate it. Please supply the source. The only thing I've seen in the actual publication simply says ambient air pressure or something like that. Otherwise, I suspect you are essentially fabricating data/making false statements.

To be fair, there is equal evidence that it could be magical pixies. To claim it as evidence of a working EM drive/quantum virtual particle/whatever thruster is extremely unscientific. The results do not support any conclusion. There is no evidence to refute a null hypothesis of the thrust being produced by heating of air. This test shows no evidence that the thing works. End of Story until they do a proper test. There is no need to go into space to do a proper test at this time

yea, but thats what I have in KSP, it kicks the PE of my orbiter up, and the PE of my lander down, and gives a little "free" dV. I was also thinking this would be better with long cables. Suppose you have the craft 10km apart, attached to each other by a cable... they both start reeling it in, at a really high acceleration that they get to orbital + speed before impact (and they fire a small thruster to avoid impacting each other). They would then meet again near their apoapsis - although this isn't true if they reach escape velocity, or if they encounter the moon. I guess it could save some propellant. In the case of a cable and two craft both going to the moon (they'd have to manuever as they approach the moon differently) - a lot of propellant. It would be nearly "propellantless", I don't know where this "quadratic" thing from the OP comes from, you just need a higher "exhaust velocity" for the other craft - a longer cable perhaps? - The earth would "recoil" ever so slightly. For destinations within earth orbit, its essentially the same as a space gun. If your craft can withstand the required accelerations... why not just use a space gun? Heck we can fantasize even more about using a space elevator or orbital ring, so that the muzzle of the space gun is outside the atmosphere. In the end, this isn't a rocket idea, its a ballistic launcher idea, and the idea of ballistic launches from a stationary position is not new. What is described in that paper is about as feasible as useing a spacegun to launch a capsule equipped with airbags to "land on" (survivably impact) the moon.

Basically, when the moon is between the sun and earth, the earth appears "full" and the moon is "dark"/"empty"/ "new" When the earth is between the sun and moon, the moon appears full and the earth is "dark"/"empty"/"new" The phases are basically opposites of each other. This is easy to replicate in KSP. Or you could look at the date of the 1st moonlanding: July 20, 1969 http://www.calendar-12.com/moon_calendar/1969/july Based on the phase of the moon viewed from earth, the earth must have been pretty full viewed from the moon. Also note that the "earthrise" pictures were taken from lunar orbit, not the surface. As the moon is tdially locked, the earth is stationary in the lunar sky.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/70047-Hammerthrows-anyone Same concept, splitting a craft in two, using each craft as reaction mass for the other.... Much much lower accelerations though.

"I don't think Oberth applies as the Emdrive is purportedly not a reaction drive." Well, supposedly it is, its just the reaction mass are these ephemeral virtual particles. Note that while hovering, or laying on the ground, there is no net acceleration- there are opposing forces yes, but no (net) acceleration (on the craft, in the hovering jet example, there's a whole lot of acceleration of air happening). The potenetial/kinetic energy of the craft does not change (except for lost fuel in the case of the hovering jet) If this EM drive works, there will be acceleration, the craft will gain kinetic energy. If it gains kinetic energy greater than the input energy, we've violated conservation of energy, as well as conservation of momention - although I think it was already stated on this thread that you can't really violate one without violating the other. This whole thing sounds ridiculous. If it really works (there is absolutely no good evidence that it does), I'll just throw up my hands, say that they've found a bug in the simulation, and ask our Universe's programmers to make me rich with a harem of beautiful women, or download my consciousness to their reality.