EM space drive

Yeah, in the context of being on the ground, in some kind of vehicle or something.

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I understand the importance of getting power without having to tote around an exhaustible fuel supply, but I don't really understand just how much power the research in these articles is reporting.

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What's 720 mN of thrust? How about 30-50 micro-Newtons?

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Could this have applications on the ground?

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Can you not see that he is trying to wrap his mind around how much power this is by comparing it to the kind of ground transportation that we are all already familiar with? I already quoted the context to you. Here, let me paraphrase it:"This is cool, but I don't get how strong it is. Does it have applications on the ground?"-well, its only 2 ounces of thrust"Oh, so you can only move 2 ounces of stuff with it?"This isn't a deep interrogation of the underlying physics behind the power of thrust in a friction-less vacuum, this is a question about how much weight can be moved along the ground with the power that this new thing creates.

CS - please don't be such a nincompoop. It doesn't look good on you.

I was really interested in figuring out what kind of acceleration you could get on an average space satellite with the 2 oz. of thrust: a 0 to 60 in so many seconds sort of answer.As for my comment about the ground, I was anticipating an answer that took into account the friction and gravity that must be overcome to move things; I wasn't too concerned about friction-less surfaces, since those don't exist in the everyday world.

The international space station weighs 9*10^5 pounds. Two ounces of thrust would produce an acceleration of about 0.00000014 g on such a mass. You could accelerate the international space station from 0-60 mph in about 8 months. That answer is correct regardless of the strength of the gravitational field the space station is in. Your question is unanswerable without making up a bunch of stuff. Gravity does not affect horizontal motion per se, and there is no standard value for the frictional forces.Vertically, 2oz of thrust can lift a 2oz object in earth's gravitational field.

Let's take a step back and think of the implications about this news.I remember when our contractors started using lasers instead of string lines at construction sites. There were some oldies that were absolutely against the idea of setting up string lines like they've been doing forever. I swear, one time an old timer asked "how do we know the laser is straight?" Sure, there were set-backs at first, but once the crews got used to the lasers, they proved to be a well worth investment. The crew no longer had to spend several hours stringing up the whole site.Then there was Guttenberg and his printing press. When I was assembling my stamp pad letters for my current project so I could simply stamp my approvals of the proposals from the project managers, it occurred to me. See, it took me 40 minutes to assemble the letters. But once I was done, that was it. I've been using that stamp for almost a year. Can you imagine old timers from Guttenberg's time dissing his printing press saying why not just sit down and write out the paper rather than spending hours assembling the letters? Well, if they were just doing 1 page, then a person with a pen could easily beat the printing press. But doing 100 or 1000 copies, then it's a different story.Or how about the steam engine or the coal engine versus the horse drawn carriage? The first race between a train and a horse was a disaster for the train. After that, most people dismissed the train as nothing but a toy and that nothing would ever replace the horse.In all those cases, it took ingenuity, patience, and open-mindedness to take a leap forward.That said, I'm some what disappointed at the reactions of the people who have posted responses in this thread. You're getting too hung up on how much force is exerted by this prototype. It's exactly like concentrating on how long the Wright brothers' plane was in the air and then dismiss it. Of course the engine didn't exert that much force. It's a prototype.Can't people see the implication of this technology for future space travel? Or are we too short-minded to just focus on how bad the prototype is and dismiss this technology overall?I for one think the this is straight from star trek. Just like how descendants of the steam engine had evolved into cars, trucks, tanks, airplanes, etc., distant descendants of this new technology will probably allow us to do long term space travels. Then our descendants will look back at us and see just how short-minded we were for not seeing the potential in something like this. You know, the same way we look at how our ancestors dismissed the various technologies in the past.

You're focusing on the wrong thing.2 oz of thrust might not sound much, but if you have a constant 2 oz of thrust for the next 10 years... A rocket engine might have a hell of a lot more thrust than, say, an ion engine, but the thrust usually lasts only minutes or seconds. And this is not to mention the enormous weight of the fuel the vessel has to carry.

As I said in my previous post, you're focusing on the wrong thing here. What they have right now is a very early version of a prototype of this technology. Don't focus on how much thrust they can produce at the moment. Focus on the fact that everything conventional tells us this is suppose to be impossible, and yet there it is.I'm sure future development of this technology will yield more thrust.Try to think of it this way. The early steam engine was extremely inefficient and didn't yield that much result. And yet its descendants have given us cars, trucks, motorboats, airplanes, etc.Never assume what the prototype can do is the limit of what the technology can achieve. Otherwise, we'd still be riding horses around right now.

If it gets confirmed.. there is a lot of unknowns yet.I am hopeful but skeptical.. of course, .. some of the most important advances are from things that turned things upside down.

Of course. I'm a skeptic myself. While I admit that I am hopeful that this will get confirmed, I am completely opened to the possibility that this may turn out to be another cold fusion debacle.Having said that, I think people are focusing on the wrong aspect of this. Yes, I know, 2 oz isn't neck snapping. But that's not what this is really about.It's like going to a baseball game and only focuses on the umpire's high pitch voice.I say these things because I work in an industry that lags behind everyone else in terms of technology. There are still some oldies that insist all our submitted reports are written by hand rather than typed on a computer and printed out. A couple years ago, a guy I know submitted a report along with a spreadsheet. The report got kicked back and he had to re-write everything out by hand. Same info. The old man upstairs just wanted to see everything done in hand writing. I find it incredibly sad that they only started allowing our contractors to use lasers in the last couple years.I'm a strong advocate of using technology to make engineering work more efficient and accurate. It's incredibly hard to do that when the people in power would ask a question like what if the laser is crooked?

oh, so you're going to play the role of anti-EM?(ducks)Edited by RAZD, : urled

Hello Taz, I remember when I was in college and we had to learn and memorize certain formulas in order to calculate things like Cardiac output or Alveolar oxygenation etc.. We had to manually calculate things like the Fick equation and such.
We were all like wtf? The information was done and printed out automatically by the monitors and computers everywhere and the stuff could be calculated with the press of a button. Our instructor would say stuff like, "What if there is a malfunction or a power outtage?" And you need to know this data NOW? You need to have a concept on where these numbers come from etc.."So in that sense I can see why in some intances it make sense to know how to do it "the old fashion way". But I tell you honestly I never have done it since school. As far as setting up a plumb and square foundation, I agree it is faster with a laser but woe to the guy who can not do it the old way! I have heard that in some states the art of penmanship and cursive is being done away with. So perhaps the end days of hand written reports will truly be on the horizon.Edited by 1.61803, : added end.

I was asking for clarification on a measurement that was unfamiliar to me.I simply wanted to know what was being said in the reports.Don't over analyze my question to justify your hyper-philosophizing.

I've seen this line of questioning before. The first light bulb was dim as hell. Imagine if people judged the technology and dismissed it off hand because the prototype was too dim for practical use. We'd still be using candles at night. So, instead of focusing on how dim the prototype light bulb was, instead try to see that there was light without fire.Like I said, progress is often times impeded by people focusing on insignificant details to judge the technology. I had to keep my eyes from rolling when a higher up engineer asked what if the laser light was crooked when we started allowing our contractors to use lasers instead of string lines. Even though work was done a lot more efficiently, the older guys kept on asking nonsensical questions to try to dismiss the lasers. And this was just lasers I'm talking about here. Us younger guys have been fighting for progress in the industry for years against stiff oppositions that just want to continue using the horse drawn carriage forever. Oh noes, they dare use the devil's gps to map out the site!Take the fax machine, for example. Instead of me signing an authorization for a change in the plans on my tablet and then email it directly from where I was standing, some oldies have told me they wanted to receive a faxed paper. Who uses fax anymore? Just open up the damn email and print out my authorization. They keep telling me they've been doing this for 40 years. I say it's time to get a computer. I swear, some people are trapped in some kind of time warp.Anyway, my rant aside, FREE TIBET!

Once I saw how easy and accurate the lasers were I went out and got my own. It has been a big help in renovating an old house - establishing real vertical walls and the level of the floors.I'm sure they were well laid out when originally built, and that the people that took two old buildings (one 1795ish the other 1860ish, moved them to this site and added a fourth corner (sometime after 1895) did the best they could, but there was still over a hundred years of wear, some questionable remodeling, and settling to deal with.Such fun.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : ...

The drive is almost certainly a hoax that a few people at Nasa have been hoodwinked into accepting. I think people can be forgiven for not taking 2 oz of thrust too seriously given that. "Quantum vacuum virtual plasma?" Really?ABE:On thinking about this a bit, the word hoax is probably not appropriate. What I mean is that the drive almost certainly does not function. I'm not going to start teaching the students I tutor that there are exceptions to conservation of momentum or to Newton's third law.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.