Discussion of metallic hydrogen propulsion split from another thread.

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, MechBFP said:

Since evidence has been given, that evidence being the mathematics that say it should be possible, that means....

I reject your assertions. #1- No evidence has been given. #2 The most current mathematics do not predict metastability. Mathematics absolutely do not say it is possible. Math alone says nothing. Mathematical descriptions of the physical world are another thing.. ie physics equations. If a physics equation is bad, then the prediction is bad. If experimental results do not conform with the equations, then the equations are no good.

Newtons equations would predict that you can go faster than the speed of light. You can't. Just because the math works out using newtons equations doesn't mean you should accept the results given that #1) We have observations that contradict it (no, its not just that experiments haven't worked out) (#2) we have newer and better equations that conform much better to the observations.

The equations since the 1970s, that conform to the observations much better, do not predict metastability for anything other than picoseconds.

That means it is unreasonable to accept the claim of usefully metastable metallic hydrogen.

Edited February 22, 2020 by KerikBalm

[MechBFP]

11 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

eject your assertions. #1- No evidence has been given. #2 The most current mathematics do not predict metastability.

If that is the case, then why are people still studying its meta stability properties? That doesn't make any sense to me. Surely the groups who are putting tens, if not 100's of thousands of dollars into this research would rather put it into something actually worthwhile?

[mcwaffles2003]

15 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I think you are misinterpreting what he said. There is no modern prediction of metastable mH. There is no experimental evidence of metastable mH.

Its like an athiest taking the position "I don't believe in god", vs the position "I believe there is no god". The latter being an affirmative claim with a burden of proof. Until such time as there is a reason to believe in metastable metallic hydrogen, we should not believe it exists.

An intellectually honest person wouldn't even say that they are certain there is no teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars... yes I am referring to Russel's Teapot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

No intellectually honest person can claim that Russel's Teapot claim is definitively false, but one is well within reason to reject the claim as being "unlikely to prove metastable [true]at this point."

Until any evidence has been given for the possibility of a mH engine, it is reasonable to reject it. The burden of proof is not to show beyond a doubt that it is impossible. If that is the burden of proof, then we can just add in nearly whatever fantasy drive we want, with nearly whatever technobabble explanation that we want.

IDK about a teapot, but I think there might be a manhole cover

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

then why are people still studying its meta stability properties?

Actually, this is two merged questions.
1. Why do the scientists study?
Because they are paid.
2. Why do the sponsors pay?
Because they hope that the study will bring some useful results, not necessary in form of the metallic hydrogen. Say, a developed equipment to be used or sold.

Edited February 23, 2020 by kerbiloid

[KerikBalm]

4 hours ago, MechBFP said:

If that is the case, then why are people still studying its meta stability properties?

#1) they aren't really (studying its metastability). First they need to make it, which is what they have been trying to do, and its still not 100% sure that they have (an alternative explanation for the observation was concentration of impurities in the hydrogen sample)

#2) they are studying metallic hydrogen, and the reasons why have been said multiple times. It is needed to validate and refine physics models, and is needed to better understand what is going on inside planets such as Jupiter, just to name 2.

Edited February 23, 2020 by KerikBalm

[fragtzack]

Scott Manly did a video few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfPNUZzG_Q

Well explained, awesome mini-documentary on MH. 

Sounds like in theory and mathmetically, MH is possible.

Folks said the same thing about men flying and splitting the atom, etc. 

Hell folks were stating that  liquid hydrogen rocket engines were not really practically. 

Yet today, NASA claims cryogenic liquid hydrogen rocket engines are the  greatest achievement by NASA of all achievements in the space program. No wonder why Russia didn't do hydrogen.. 

All great achievements start with a theory. Since we are imagining the future in a video game, tis completely logical to use existing real life theory, a theory proven with math that many scientists agree on.

$kerbalSpaceProgram != #REALITY

 

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by fragtzack

[wumpus]

10 minutes ago, fragtzack said:

Scott Manly did a video few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfPNUZzG_Q

Well explained, awesome mini-documentary on MH. 

Sounds like in theory and mathmetically, MH is possible.

There are two entirely separate things under consideration.

1. A metallic state for hydrogen: This is highly probable, and research is getting closer and closer to obtaining it and determining its attributes.

2. A meta-stable condition that allows said metallic hydrogen to remain metallic without the use of a diamond press at all times.  This appears to be [old] science fiction and unlikely to be possible.  Certainly hydrogen has been subjected to on the order of 400GPa, and any metallic hydrogen formed immediately went back to gaseous state after the test.  It doesn't seem likely to remain in any form useful for rocket propellant tanks.

Most of us expect that MH exists.  There doesn't seem much hope that it will ever be used as rocket fuel.

PS: I remember an aside my Chemistry Professor made: if we could store monotomic hydrogen (H₁ molecules) in such a propellant tank it would be roughly as effective as a nuclear rocket.  Since this was a chemistry class (and not rocket science) he didn't elaborate on exactly what Isp he was talking about (and I didn't have any more rocket science then than a typical science fiction fan of the 1980s), so I'm expecting that it would be on the order of MH.  So don't assume that MH is the only way to store hydrogen in a high-energy state, but I have less imagination for some means of storing monotomic hydrogen with an acceptable dry mass.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, fragtzack said:

Yet today, NASA claims cryogenic liquid hydrogen rocket engines are the  greatest achievement by NASA of all achievements in the space program. No wonder why Russia didn't do hydrogen.. 

Energy had the central core with hydrolox. Angara's upper stage KVTK is designed with hydrolox.
In other cases it's more practical to use same propellants in all stages.

[KerikBalm]

8 hours ago, fragtzack said:

Sounds like in theory and mathmetically, MH is possible.

Again, someone who doesn't understand the discussion. Its not if Hydrogen can be metallic, its wether it would remain metallic at low pressure. If your tank needs to contain its contents at ~415 GPa, then its useless as a propellent because the mass faction of your tank will offset (massively) the Isp or TWR advantage. Watch your video at 7:30.

Quote

Folks said the same thing about men flying and splitting the atom, etc. 

Bad analogy is bad

Quote

Hell folks were stating that  liquid hydrogen rocket engines were not really practically. 

Yet today, NASA claims cryogenic liquid hydrogen rocket engines are the  greatest achievement by NASA of all achievements in the space program. No wonder why Russia didn't do hydrogen.. 

I do not accept the validity of these assertions, please support your assertions

Quote

tis completely logical to use existing real life theory, a theory proven with math that many scientists agree on.

The current real life theory does not predict relevant meta-stability. The relevant theory that predicted it was from the 1970's, and is disproven. I reject your assertion of proven theory and scientific consensus.

See this post I'm quoting? this is exactly what I'm talking about. KSP2 is getting people to believe untrue things. I'm so tired of "alternative facts" spreading.

They need to rename this engine to a "liquid explodium" rocket...

[fragtzack]

"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris…[because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping."

Humans  can figure out how to engineer better machines and tools given enough people and time. Believe this history of man trying to fly goes back a few thousand years before the Wright bothers. There was large number of people throughout history saying men could not fly. Actually, the Wright bro were not the first to fly, they were the first to fly a controllable/steerable machine.

"If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance."

Good thing the Wright brothers stayed positive and didn't believe the truth that had been proven men could not fly.

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."

Wow, good thing folks didn't believe this guy who was one of the founders of early computing. 

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.

Albert Einstein, the man behind the theory of atomic energy didn't even believe atomic energy was possible..

Albert Einstein also died not believing in Black Holes, yet his theory gave birth to the idea of black holes. Black holes were not proven until something like 70 years after Einstein birthed the theory and then Schwarzschild a year or 2 later proved black holes mathematically using Einstein theory.

 

So based on history, I have no credence to someone implying  "Well, the theory of MH existence may be true but impossible for humans to actually engineer a way to use MH". I find no conclusive evidence that humans/scientists have stopped trying to make a workable MH. There is not a workable MH technology at this time, but there certainly could be some day. Probably not even in my life time, but who knows.

The most important thing though as someone pointed out, "this is a video game" first and foremost not a "physics simulator".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kerbiloid]

There is some contradiction between the abstract LiquidFuel/Oxidizer/Monopropellant, whatever this mean, and too exact MetallicHydrogen looking absolutely excessively concrete.

There are Kethane, Karbonite, Karborundum, there was Blutonium and other same things, so an unexplained Explodium like suggested looks surely better than this pretending MH.

Either a toy set or a real hard sci-fi, no need to mix them. KSP-1 provides both ways by mods.

Edited February 24, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

@fragtzack The stability of metallic hydrogen outside of extreme pressure environments isn't an unsolved engineering problem, it's a physics question which appears to have "No" as an answer so far. No amount of human ingenuity can change the laws of physics, just ask Scotty. 

[KerikBalm]

6 minutes ago, fragtzack said:

*bad analogies that don't address any of the points brought up*

Do you have any actual arguments in favor of metallic hydrogen engines being possible, or would you just like to go with "you can't prove it wrong 100%". You can always go into hard solipsim and make that argument about anything.

Therefore I propose we have popcorn powered engines with 100,000 Isp and 1,000:1 TWR. You can't prove its impossible!!!!!

[Guest]

Spoiler

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

There is some contradiction between the abstract LiquidFuel/Oxidizer/Monopropellant, whatever this mean, and too exact MetallicHydrogen looking absolutely excessively concrete.

There are Kethane, Karbonite, Karborundum, there was Blutonium and other same things, so an unexplained Explodium like suggested looks surely better than this pretending MH.

Either a toy set or a real hard sci-fi, no need to mix them. KSP-1 provides both ways by mods.

I vote to call it Unimplodium ^.^ 

[KSK]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Do you have any actual arguments in favor of metallic hydrogen engines being possible, or would you just like to go with "you can't prove it wrong 100%". You can always go into hard solipsim and make that argument about anything.

Therefore I propose we have popcorn powered engines with 100,000 Isp and 1,000:1 TWR. You can't prove its impossible!!!!!

I don’t suppose you could gimmick up a hay powered engine could you? A popcorn drive sounds just the thing for feeding the space elves currently powering my ship but I was rather hoping to upgrade the engine to a Magic Unicorn Drive.

Hence the need for hay.

[linuxgurugamer]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Therefore I propose we have popcorn powered engines with 100,000 Isp and 1,000:1 TWR. You can't prove its impossible!!!!!

Go ahead, nothing is stopping you.

BTW, enjoy the green slime you will get after subjecting you poor kerbals to such an insane acceleration

[kerbiloid]

The Kerbal green slime is available only in the Kethane mod. At least can't recall any other Kerbal sacrifice-device.

[KerikBalm]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Go ahead, nothing is stopping you.

BTW, enjoy the green slime you will get after subjecting you poor kerbals to such an insane acceleration

Well, its only the engine that has that TWR, so naturally, the popcorn drive engine should be used to push massive ships, and is not suitable for smaller ships.

This is real science because you can't prove its wrong.

[StrandedonEarth]

As to the whole debate of having "Metallic Hydrogen" in KSP2 causing people to think metastable MetH is a real thing, that could be countered by simply having a disclaimer in the KSPedia page for MetH. stating something along the lines of "Recent experiments have shown that pure MetH is not metastable, but some hope remains that metastability may be found by doping or alloying."

Sure, one can argue that not everyone will read that particular slide of the KSPedia, but at least the disclaimer will be there.

[KerikBalm]

I should also note that you can dope the popcorn with butter for better Isp, but lower TWR. The butter lubricates the popcorn, so it has less friction when exiting the nozzle as it pops, but the butter addition machinery adds mass, and you need to limit how much popcorn you pop per unit time.

Real science, you can't prove me wrong

[kerbiloid]

popcorn + antipopcorn = antimatter flake drive

[KSK]

49 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I should also note that you can dope the popcorn with butter for better Isp, but lower TWR. The butter lubricates the popcorn, so it has less friction when exiting the nozzle as it pops, but the butter addition machinery adds mass, and you need to limit how much popcorn you pop per unit time.

Real science, you can't prove me wrong

Have you considered inertial confinement popping? I believe that ejecting the kernels behind the spacecraft and then popping them with a radiant heat source, or possibly a maser, could lead to a significant mass-flow increase without the need for butter.

In fact I imagine you could get up to a significant fraction of c with such an engine.

 

[fragtzack]

Tis fun to imagine the future

Imagination has no right or wrong

-------------

Clearly the above is the correct answer to this whole ridiculous argument about what the future of what technology may be.  KSP2  is a video game and not limited to real world physics. KSP1 has huge glaring holes in the physics model and KSP2 will also be riddled with physics inaccuracies.

 Scientists are still actively pursuing creating MH which could  possibly lead to humans actually using MH. MH is still in the experimental stage and no and the  scientific community has not widely agreed upon MF. If MH was widely disproved and an accepted agreement by the scientific community, scientists would stop try to make MH.  There is zero wide spread agreement that MH is not workable. The points made here against MH doesn't add up to the scientific community actions on MH.

 

Notice this date is from July 2019, 6 months ago:

 

https://gizmodo.com/80-year-quest-to-create-metallic-hydrogen-may-finally-b-1835815725

 

So the scientific answer to if MH is possible or not is not decided by the scientific community yet. There is no worldwide consensus that MH is not possible that I have found.

 

Only on this forum posts is there claims of "impossible" and "won't work". Glad these negative folks are not part of any real endeavors to advance humankind beyond currently available technology.

 

 

 

 

[KSK]

And - once again - that article says nothing about metastable metallic hydrogen. I don't think anyone here is disputing that metallic hydrogen is a thing - or very likely to be a thing. But unless you can store it at a reasonable pressure then it loses its value as a rocket propellant.

[KerikBalm]

3 hours ago, KSK said:

Have you considered inertial confinement popping? I believe that ejecting the kernels behind the spacecraft and then popping them with a radiant heat source, or possibly a maser, could lead to a significant mass-flow increase without the need for butter.

In fact I imagine you could get up to a significant fraction of c with such an engine.

 

The one I have in mind has the kernals pre heated so that only a small prick or disturbance from the outside ruptures them and releases their energy. No need to heat with a heat source on the ship.

This can outperform mH, because the corn will be genetically modified.