Many of these are theoretical technologies or provide very little thrust. Ram drives are designed to scoop up their propellant as they go (from the thin hydrogen gas in space). There are also designs that do not need propellant, such as solar sails or using a laser to push a spaceship. There are drives, however, that generate energy to accelerate a separate propellant, such as an ion drive. Most of the energy spent in getting to orbit is lifting the fuel you need to get into orbit.įor most rockets used today, the fuel is the propellant. This means you have to accelerate the fuel and propellant also, and the fuel for accelerating that fuel, etc. Perhaps the biggest limitation of space travel is that you have to carry around your fuel and propellant with you. This would transform space travel, and make things like hovercars a reality. The idea here is to create a drive that converts energy into thrust without the need for accelerate propellant in the opposite direction. Scientists should not idly speculate about violating them. Conservation laws in physics are among the most reliable and solid of the laws of the universe that we have discovered. It seems to violate the conservation of momentum. Producing thrust without propellant is similar. Such a stance has a very good history to support it.Īt the same time, I wouldn’t invest a dime of my own money in a company claiming to have invented a free energy machine, and I don’t think our taxes should fund such research either. Sure, it’s always possible that our understanding of the universe is incomplete in a way that allows for one of these phenomena to be true, but our current understanding calls for extreme initial skepticism. The claims made for a machine that can provide thrust without propellant is as unlikely and at variance with the laws of physics as neutrinos traveling faster than light or free energy machines. After further analysis, it was found that the results were an error – an artifact introduced in the experimental setup. The physics community didn’t believe it, but they did their due diligence. The researchers were very careful, they rigorously reviewed every aspect of their experiment, and only announced the results when they were confident they ruled out all error. My reaction is identical to the claim made in 2011 that a team of researchers found that neutrinos travel faster than light. I don’t necessarily think the results of NASA’s test are untrue, just that I don’t think they have “validated” that the propellantless drive is what proponents say it is. The bottom line is that I just don’t believe it. When you recover, take a look at this article about NASA “validating” an allegedly impossible drive. “The LIGO discovery a few years back was, in my opinion, a huge leap forward in science, since it proved, experimentally, that spacetime can ‘warp’ and bend in the presence of enormous gravitational fields, and this is propagated out across the Universe in a way that we can measure.I’m skeptical. “In the past 5-10 years or so, there has been a lot of excellent progress along the lines of predicting the anticipated effects of the drive, determining how one might bring it into existence, reinforcing fundamental assumptions and concepts, and, my personal favourite, ways to test the theory in a laboratory. Mr Agnew told Universe Today: “The historically theoretical nature of the idea is also itself a likely deterrent, as it’s much more difficult to see substantial progress when you are looking at equations instead of quantitative results. The theory seemed improbable at the time, but the discovery of gravitational wave proved that space-time can warp, as per special relativity.
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