Cannae/EmDrive

[jfull]

Crap, the article makes it sound like, if this works, it would suggest that we really do live in a False Vacuum and a Metastability Event could wipe us out at some point.

am I interpreting that correctly?

[Frozen_Heart]

Crap, the article makes it sound like, if this works, it would suggest that we really do live in a False Vacuum and a Metastability Event could wipe us out at some point.

am I interpreting that correctly?

Well the universe has been around quite a few billion years. Chances of it happening while the human race exists are rather slim.

Unless the warp drive tests cause it...

[Scotius]

Perish the thought. I'm enjoying an awesome daydream about humanity becoming a proper space civilisation thanks to the work of Alcubierre, Shawyer, White and the crew of Eagleworks. Universal apocalypse is not needed

[jfull]

Well the universe has been around quite a few billion years. Chances of it happening while the human race exists are rather slim.

Unless the warp drive tests cause it...

Those kinds of thoughts are always in the back of my mind

[Dodgey]

It's like I've said, wait for more data. Also, ahem WOOHOO.

[prophet_01]

Let's see if this works. If it's actually working thid is a true game changer. Just a quick look at the potential !manned! missions in that articlr showed the possibilties. Reaching Saturn in about a year, holy cow!

Also, valid data seems to be available pretty soon compared to most other interesting projects. If I understand it right, speculations should finally be over by the end of the year.

A proof of concept for a reactionless drive would be the mother of all christmas gifts But it's nice to get clearance eitherway

Edited April 16, 2015 by prophet_01

[magnemoe]

Those kinds of thoughts are always in the back of my mind

Yes remember that some settings mostly supernovas, neutron stars and black holes give energy levels far above anything we could manage. In short we can not destroy the universe. Unlikely we can even destroy ourselves with an high energy experiment

[Mazon Del]

I've been watching the NASA thread and it is quite interesting getting the data first hand in a lot of ways, especially as people pop in with different ideas on what could be causing the thrust and the Eagleworks team responding with information or tests to address that concern. It is sort of like a science based reality show.

In short, they have announced that they have funding for this NASA fiscal year, they are working on the 1.2 kilowatt version to test if Shawyer and the Chinese teams results are real at those power levels. The vacuum tests seem to have done their job at removing atmospheric effects as the cause of the thrust, so these future tests might be conducted in atmosphere. They have also dropped information about the Micro Warp Field Interferometer results, the bit about the 27,000 data points. At the same time, some people (Mulletron) are creating 'at home' test setups to try their own experiments. He seems to be planning to release a document explaining how to rebuild his setup so that people can do their own independent testing.

[Teamwork]

I know this is really off topic but

... I trained under as a student at friggin' Cornell University, a school I am *VERY* proud of being able to call my alma mater...

!!

I didn't know you went to Cornell, that's awesome! I'm a mechanical engineer there/here, and I think it's so cool that you went to the same school as me.

[crazyewok]

I bet even IF its proven to work the many luddites floating around will shout it down still and demand the project cancelled cause it doesn't fit the current physics model so therefore it cant exist so therefore it should not exist.

[Mazon Del]

Luckily for us though, companies tend to do the thing that makes economical sense. It might take them a while to get around to it, but if you've got people with cubesats buzzing around using one of these drives you can bet it won't take to long for bigger satellites to start.

[DaMichel]

Well i think scientists are more than happy if an interesting new phenomenon is discovered. It gives them something to research and to write about. Publish or perish!

The problem is, when something seemingly contradicts all of our accumulated physics knowledge, of course people are careful not to waste their money, time and possibly career with what turns out to be a measurement error.

If the effect is real, more groups will try to replicate the experiment and it will be acknowledged by theorists.

This is cool news btw.

[Nuke]

Luckily for us though, companies tend to do the thing that makes economical sense. It might take them a while to get around to it, but if you've got people with cubesats buzzing around using one of these drives you can bet it won't take to long for bigger satellites to start.

the cost of a cubsat launch is approachable enough to crowd fund a trial by fire of one of these drives. just get all the believers to pitch in a buck. i think the em drive is a tad too power hungry for a cube sat power supply, but maybe one of the cannae or woodward drives might be worth a go.

i posted a conjecture that a woodward drive might be constructed from spare parts using ewaste found on the iss (i think that was in this thread somewhere). i wonder what other kind of science they can do with junk they have floating around.

[Leszek]

I bet even IF its proven to work the many luddites floating around will shout it down still and demand the project cancelled cause it doesn't fit the current physics model so therefore it cant exist so therefore it should not exist.

It can seem that the naysayers are luddites and curmudgeons, but they aren't. Most of them will be just as excited as you if this works in the end. Many will be more excited.

There are really good reasons to expect this to fail and and our continued pointing this out should not be taken as ivory tower arrogance. If this works, there is a chance (albeit remote) that even I could end up on Mars. WOW. That is awesome. It would be lovely if it worked. But all the hope and excitement in the world doesn't change the fact that there are really good reasons to expect this to fail.

No one is saying we shouldn't test the idea out. In science Data is the only thing that matters.

What is being said is that there are really good reasons to expect this to not work. (Yes I said it 3 times. I will say it 400 if I have too.) So we should not be betting anything significant on its success. If the choice is funding this or mundane engine development, we should fund the mundane engine development. However the budget for this is small, a test that is definitive is coming, so lets do it. Just don't be surprised when it doesn't work.

The issue in the grand scheme of things is that we have finite resources, crackpots come up with an infinite number of ideas, we can't explore all the ideas on the table. So we need to filter out the crackpot ideas or we will never develop anything. The disagreement is where one draws the crackpot idea line. This drive is square in the middle of the disputed zone, and much of that is only because it was already tested with success in preliminaries, otherwise it was a waste of money to even try. Now what does that mean if it works? Does that mean the policy of not testing crackpot ideas is wrong? No, it means the crackpots got lucky once and it is unlikely to happen again. We can't test every idea we have to put our money where the best chance of success will be. This is a heuristic, not a law of nature. Heuristics are wrong sometimes but right most of the time. Don't stand holding an umbrella in the middle of an empty field during a lightning storm is a Heuristic. If you don't get hit by lightning, does that mean the Heuristic was wrong?

Edited April 16, 2015 by Leszek

[crazyewok]

It can seem that the naysayers are luddites and curmudgeons, but they aren't. Most of them will be just as excited as you if this works in the end. Many will be more excited.

There are really good reasons to expect this to fail and and our continued pointing this out should not be taken as ivory tower arrogance. If this works, there is a chance (albeit remote) that even I could end up on Mars. WOW. That is awesome. It would be lovely if it worked. But all the hope and excitement in the world doesn't change the fact that there are really good reasons to expect this to fail.

No one is saying we shouldn't test the idea out. In science Data is the only thing that matters.

What is being said is that there are really good reasons to expect this to not work. (Yes I said it 3 times. I will say it 400 if I have too.) So we should not be betting anything significant on its success. If the choice is funding this or mundane engine development, we should fund the mundane engine development. However the budget for this is small, a test that is definitive is coming, so lets do it. Just don't be surprised when it doesn't work.

The issue in the grand scheme of things is that we have finite resources, crackpots come up with an infinite number of ideas, we can't explore all the ideas on the table. So we need to filter out the crackpot ideas or we will never develop anything. The disagreement is where one draws the crackpot idea line. This drive is square in the middle of the disputed zone, and much of that is only because it was already tested with success in preliminaries, otherwise it was a waste of money to even try. Now what does that mean if it works? Does that mean the policy of not testing crackpot ideas is wrong? No, it means the crackpots got lucky once and it is unlikely to happen again. We can't test every idea we have to put our money where the best chance of success will be. This is a heuristic, not a law of nature. Heuristics are wrong sometimes but right most of the time. Don't stand holding an umbrella in the middle of an empty field during a lightning storm is a Heuristic. If you don't get hit by lightning, does that mean the Heuristic was wrong?

I know full well what science is and how it is conducted. I'm only a lowly biologist but I know how the scientific method works.

If you noticed I underlined the word IF.

Even I expect this to fail.

It goes against the current laws of known physics so the odds are stacked against it.

My point was there are many that think just looking into this is a waste of time.

Sometimes you have to look at a few crackpot ideas from time to time especially when chemical rockets are a dead end.

If we cant move beyond chemical rockets we may as well just give up now with manned space exploration.

And NASA I think understands this hence the funding to look at unusual proposed propulsion methods.

Edited April 16, 2015 by crazyewok

[Leszek]

I know full well what science is and how it is conducted. I'm only a lowly biologist but I know how the scientific method works.

If you noticed I underlined the word IF.

Even I expect this to fail.

It goes against the current laws of known physics so the odds are stacked against it.

My point was there are many that think just looking into this is a waste of time.

Sometimes you have to look at a few crackpot ideas from time to time especially when chemical rockets are a dead end.

If we cant move beyond chemical rockets we may as well just give up now with manned space exploration.

And NASA I think understands this hence the funding to look at unusual proposed propulsion methods.

I never said nor meant to imply you didn't know about science and I think biology is AWESOME. Seriously I own perhaps 2 dozen books on biology and um "A Brief History of Time."

My point was to highlight the real issue at play and to point out that skepticism has its place here. Perhaps I took your previous post to pessimistically but that is how it sounded to me.

[Fel]

Well the universe has been around quite a few billion years. Chances of it happening while the human race exists are rather slim.

Unless the warp drive tests cause it...

There they were, traveling to a distant star system when they picked up the faint signs of primitive warp technology. Earth. They turned the ship to the planet and called for support. The human threat could be ignored no longer.

* A bit more on topic... I think the media is turning this into a greater scandal than it actually should be. A team of scientists have a device that appears to violate the laws of physics as we know it... but they don't know how it works, what it is doing, what new theory is needed to explain it or if it is even a red herring and something entirely different is happening. While the people working on the project might have grand ideas that further violate the laws of physics; it is really just a matter of them being excited about their work. Until they know and have fully documented the device, how it works, an have a working theory behind it, considering it an anomaly, even if repeatable, is good science.

Of course, I think the scientific community is much more likely to be upset about the PRESS it gets, even the funding, as their own projects are equally groundbreaking in their eyes.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Fel

[ZetaX]

If we cant move beyond chemical rockets we may as well just give up now with manned space exploration.

And we should give up on it anyway. There is no point in sending a few humans to a place when we have tech that can do the same or better. Maybe some day we can and want to send humans to colonize space, and only then we would need something better.

[Leszek]

And we should give up on it anyway. There is no point in sending a few humans to a place when we have tech that can do the same or better. Maybe some day we can and want to send humans to colonize space, and only then we would need something better.

I understand this sentiment, but I think it is counter productive. We will not have the technology to send humans to Mars until we try to send humans to mars. We took 13 years to do the Human Genome Project, the technology we gained by actually doing the project helped us complete it 2 years earlier and now we complete them much faster and cheaper than before.

If we wait until the technology exists we will never have the technology, or at least not for a very long time. If we ever want to go elsewhere we will need to work towards that goal. That doesn't mean we defund everything else for that goal, but in my humble opinion it is a bad idea to just sit back and wait.

[crazyewok]

I never said nor meant to imply you didn't know about science and I think biology is AWESOME. Seriously I own perhaps 2 dozen books on biology and um "A Brief History of Time."

My point was to highlight the real issue at play and to point out that skepticism has its place here. Perhaps I took your previous post to pessimistically but that is how it sounded to me.

No worries its hard to get meaning sometimes via text online.

I agree im pretty skeptical of the EM drive.

But I think we are at a point were we need to explore new idea.

In the next couple of decades we are going to hit the limit of what chemical rockets can do for manned space flight. That limit will be a short term manned mars mission, anything beyond that will be next to impossible. A mars base will be extremely unlikely due to the sheer logistical costs and so will a moon base probably. As more main stream civilian orbital space flight again forget it unless your extremely rich. Chemical rockets are too slow, too dangerous and most importantly too expensive.

I have a few Astrophysicist friends they all have there own opinion on what the next generation of space propulsion will be, but one thing they all agree on is chemical rockets as they are now have nearly reached there limit and we need a alternative.

I personally dont think the EM drive will be that alternative (but I hope im wrong) but we need to look.

One thing I learned when working in the development side of R&D is when you hit a roadblock and nothing you try seems to go through sometimes you need to be a a bit of a cowboy and use some imagination.

- - - Updated - - -

And we should give up on it anyway. There is no point in sending a few humans to a place when we have tech that can do the same or better. Maybe some day we can and want to send humans to colonize space, and only then we would need something better.

People a lot smarter than me and you disagree (IE Mr Hawkins ).

We cant wait for a ELE to be almost on top of us before we make that move. We need to start working on it now.

It could take a hundred years or more to develop the next generation of space propulsion or it could take the next decade, we dot know. Better to start now than wait until it could be too late.

Edited April 17, 2015 by crazyewok

[ZetaX]

I understand this sentiment, but I think it is counter productive. We will not have the technology to send humans to Mars until we try to send humans to mars. We took 13 years to do the Human Genome Project, the technology we gained by actually doing the project helped us complete it 2 years earlier and now we complete them much faster and cheaper than before.

If we wait until the technology exists we will never have the technology, or at least not for a very long time. If we ever want to go elsewhere we will need to work towards that goal. That doesn't mean we defund everything else for that goal, but in my humble opinion it is a bad idea to just sit back and wait.

A lot of the tech would be developed anyway, e.g. materials, and I won't object to all the required science being done, even right now; it's science after all. But the really expensive and, from a scientific point, useless steps (especially: actually sending people) should not be taken. We gain nothing of value from that.

We are talking about many billions of dollars here, something that could be better spent on either a) science, helping the poor, c) having a better life (the difference to being that this is more egoistical).

People a lot smarter than me and you disagree (IE Mr Hawkins ).

Argument from authority. And I don't like being compared to anyone, especially if you don't know me. Also, citation needed.

We cant wait for a ELE to be almost on top of us before we make that move. We need to start working on it now.

Most ELE won't be resolved by us being capable of sending a few people to mars. Actually I cannot think of a single one:

Asteroid? Change its course (using those very advanced robots we develop[ed] exactly to_not_ send humans)!

Aliens? Then better be nice, a faster drive won't help you anyway, they would find you.

Gamma burst/Supernova? You won't see it coming; and you possibly can't escape it anyway.

Vacuum decay? No chance.

Human made ones? Then maybe spending all that money on preventing it in the first place would have been better.

[Karriz]

So umm, what's going on here? It's good that NASA is looking into this thing, but even if it works, it'll be used for space-only purposes, and won't be replacing chemical rockets until we also figure out how to do very lightweight and powerful energy generation. Also, chemical rockets aren't a dead-end technology, if the whole reusability thing works out.

In the meantime, exploration can go on, as it's not mutually exclusive with tecnology development.

[Firwen]

But the really expensive and, from a scientific point, useless steps (especially: actually sending people) should not be taken. We gain nothing of value from that.

In the same way than on earth, you have actions and scientific experience that can be done only by human nowadays. And probably still for few decades.

We are talking about many billions of dollars here, something that could be better spent on either a) science, helping the poor, c) having a better life (the difference to being that this is more egoistical).

That's not a valid excuse.

You have currently a lot of billions spent on things way more useless than "doing science and bring humanity for the first time of its existence on an other planet". If you want to save money to "help the poor", start from there. It has already been proved that getting humanity out of poverty is not a money problem, it is a political problem. UN reported a while ago that the amount of money needed to solve world hunger, is equivalent to one week of US military spending.

[ZetaX]

In the same way than on earth, you have actions and scientific experience that can be done only by human nowadays. And probably still for few decades.

There is not a single thing outside of close earth space that humans can do while robots currently can not. You are vastly underestimating our robots. Humans die from anything outside a very small temperature range, need oxygen (which is an agressive chemical), need food and not just energy, have psychological issues, and so on.

That's not a valid excuse.

You have currently a lot of billions spent on things way more useless than "doing science and bring humanity for the first time of its existence on an other planet". If you want to save money to "help the poor", start from there. It has already been proved that getting humanity out of poverty is not a money problem, it is a political problem. UN reported a while ago that the amount of money needed to solve world hunger, is equivalent to one week of US military spending.

Just because something else is worse does not make it right. And there is even poverty inside the US, spending money on them is much easier to justify if one has money to spare.

As I already said, you can continue any research you want as long as it is actuall research (yes, even on how to send people to mars); but so far nobody has mentioned a good reason for why we actually should go there anytime soon, except to satisfy our own ego.

[Firwen]

As I already said, you can continue any research you want as long as it is actuall research (yes, even on how to send people to mars); but so far nobody has mentioned a good reason for why we actually should go there anytime soon, except to satisfy our own ego.

...

Randomly

a) Study how human beeing adapted under other planet constrains. Which is the next step after a space station....

Proceed to advanced scientific experiments that robots can not do ( deep drilling, advanced rock/material analysis, adaptation of Earth life on other planet ? )

c) Study / Start terraformation to solve future potential over populations.