NASA backed Engineers test bedding "Warp" drive technology

[Monash]

Back OT: I think we are going to be forever limited by reaction (mass) drives. If we have to expel stuff out the back end, then we must have either massive amounts of propellant for decent acceleration; or, be satisfied with puny acceleration but moderate fuel load. Both options fail. And AFAIK a reactionless drive is science fiction.

Perhaps not quite entirely.There are technologies like M2P2 I referred to that are not based on "rocket" drives. If it works as touted even trips to the outer solar system would require no more than a few kilos of fuel - preferably an inert gas to inflate the plasma "sails" used to propel and steer the vessel - and yes acceleration is low but within reason there is no limit imposed on the size/mass of such a craft. As I said start with a small kick from something more conventional and then someone like Horatio Hornblower would be in their element! By itself this device is estimated to be capable of achieving speeds close to 300,000kph.

As for reactionless drives I can hope but doubt I'll live to see it. In any event there might be resources beyond the belt (eg the Jovian and Saturnian moon systems) that we want to access and we might even someday want to launch unmanned probes to other (local systems) but all that is far off I think.
Still maybe they will find their "warp bubbles". :tankie:

[tankie]

A great debate this one , now DONT SHOOT THE MSGR but heres one I posted before in the Vatican thread but I think it deserves another outing in here as a report ref new propulsion systems . There are very familiar and credibles names aboard ,,,,


US military has crafts which reach Moon in 90 min and we went to Mars - YouTube

[Monash]

Sorry Tankie but their hasn't been a significant technological development in all of history that has manage to remain "secret" for long if it represented a significant improvement over other existing systems.

The Hittites couldn't keep iron a secret, Chinese couldn't keep gun powder or silk a "secret", the allies couldn't keep the A-bomb a secret and the US couldn't keep "stealth" aircraft a secret. The only way to keep it "secret" is not to use it yourself because once you do you tell anyone who is looking (and these days everyone is looking) that it exists and that's all it takes. If they can't buy, trade or steal it then failing all else they WILL reproduce it themselves. All it takes is time and money and determination, no-one has a monopoly on "smart" and knowing it is possible is all it takes if it is important enough. (And a high tech space drive is about as important as it can get.)

Case in point 18th century (I think) the Chinese had a monopoly on the production of fine "china". The demand amongst Europe's elites for this product was enormous as it was superior to anything the West could produce at the time however the Chinese producers had a monopoly and so refused to reveal the secret of its manufacture. Eventually of course Westerners "infiltrated" the manufacturing cantons despite high security measures and sent home samples of the clay and details of the production techniques. Result - goodby Chinese porcelain hello Wedgwood (or similar). Sought of puts China's current industrial espionage efforts in perspective doesn't it. )

The point is if the US government was prepared to invest resources in developing it they would have to use it otherwise why build it in the first place and if nothing else the temptation to gain an immediate advantage over the "Soviet's" would be too great. Finally and (and trust me on this) conspiracies don't hold together when you have to involve more than a handful of people for longer than a few months - people talk, they can't help themselves, I see it all the time. So, unless this "drive" was developed by 3 guys in a basement somewhere using parts bought from Kmart the number scientists, engineers and designers involved as well as the resources required to develop it would guarantee that knowledge of at least the "basics" would leak out. Shortly thereafter Aviation Weekly would be publishing "rumors".

So as much as I would like to think it was possible, no space drive yet, maybe next century but not now.

Cheers

[tankie]

Sabot , on , fire , target , stop ,

Cheers Monash , but , and there always is one ? do you know for certain , ps who shot Kennedy ? as far as Im led to believe , it was Oswalde , :whome: but (and there it is again , but ) , was it . :)

We just are not privvy to what secret propulsions are about , sooooooooo therefore the vid could just be crap ,,,butttttttttt maybe we are using that tech , area 51 , maybe we are the spotted flying saucers , could be could it not . :confu:

I accept your opinion tho m8 :)

[Minskaya]

The life cycle of a main sequence star like our sun is clearly understood by astrophysics. Our sun is about halfway through its life cycle. However, there will come a point when all of its hydrogen is depleted and the thermonuclear process becomes helium based. This point will mark the beginning of the end of the four interior rocky planets in our solar system. As the sun burns helium it will begin to expand and eventually either consume or vaporize Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. But that scenario is billions of years into the future.

On a less grandiose time scale, the past 200 years has seen tremendous advances in the Earth sciences of paleontology, geophysics, geology, mineralogy, seismology, oceanography, and biology. The composite historical record is clear and unambiguous... the Earth is dynamic and constantly changing. Our terrestrial sphere's of land, sea, and atmosphere are interconnected. There is a complex symbiosis between the geosphere and the biosphere. Whatever planetary changes occur, a measure of life here on Earth will survive. The caveat is survival of the human species.

The historical record tells us that there have been 5 major mass extinctions (70-95%) of life on Earth, and ~15 less severe mass extinctions. The main culprits are the tectonic bullet and the cosmic missile. Both events have the capability to initiate what are known as positive feedback loops, which trigger astounding environmental changes in a geophysical blink of an eye. According to our planet's historical record and the laws of probability, one of these catastrophic events is either approaching or overdue.

In the long view, the human species has but two options. Space-travel or extinction.

[Mihais]

I'll take space travel.We have a small problem though.80% of mankind is still stuck in various stages of pre modern development,from the stone age to the medieval.We need to either get rid of that ballast,or advance them to the first world level.And since uniform development is an utopia...
Wrt to life on earth,we have a biodiversity bank in Svalbard for agricultural plants.We can expand that to include everything that lives(or lived) and repopulate new worlds with our lifeforms.It starts evolution from scratch,in a way.

But even there,in space,you'll still need infantry :hug:

[Parihaka]

Hidden in Einstein’s Math: Faster-than-Light Travel?

Although Einstein's theories suggest nothing can move faster than the speed of light, two scientists have extended his equations to show what would happen if faster-than-light travel were possible.

Despite an apparent prohibition on such travel by Einstein’s theory of special relativity, the scientists said the theory actually lends itself easily to a description of velocities that exceed the speed of light.

"We started thinking about it, and we think this is a very natural extension of Einstein's equations," said applied mathematician James Hill, who co-authored the new paper with his University of Adelaide, Australia, colleague Barry Cox. The paper was published Oct. 3 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Scientists have extended Einstein's equations for faster-than-light travel. Here a three-dimensional (right) graph shows the relationship between three different velocities: v, u and U, where v is the velocity of a second observer measured by a first observer, u is the velocity of a moving particle measured by the second observer, and U is the relative velocity of the particle to the first observer.

[tantalus]

The main culprits are the tectonic bullet .

what types of events are you referring to here, supervolcanoes ? because it seems conceivable to be with an even extensive eruption, that advanced species could survive ?

and the cosmic missile... In the long view, the human species has but two options. Space-travel or extinction.

At the moment, it seems far more plausible that in the short or long term, deflection or destruction of impact threats is more likely than space travel to escape them, if we spot them that is...
Asteroid impact avoidance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gamma ray bursts are a different matter.

[USSWisconsin]

I've always been skeptical of calling Einstein's simple modeling function in special relativity a "speed limit" - its an equation with asymptotes. People believed there was an impenetrable sound barrier for a long time too. There could be a better model or perhaps a way to manage the "shocks" of crossing those asymptotes. Maybe it needs to be done far away from other mass? Maybe there's more to the problem, things that we don't know yet?

[Chogy]

what types of events are you referring to here, supervolcanoes ? because it seems conceivable to be with an even extensive eruption, that advanced species could survive ?

A planetary super-event might be easily survivable by millions of people... initially. It's what happens in the decades, centuries to come that makes survival of the species doubtful. For example, if Yellowstone lets loose and obliterates most of North America, folk in Asia might initially only see some spectacular sunrises. But the event could trigger a positive feedback loop in a direction that could turn the planet back into snowball Earth, or perhaps a hot and dessicated husk.

Even then, advanced societies might have extensive underground facilities with hydroponics, atomic power, all the things you'd think would be nice to have in an apocalyptic scenario. But now you've got inbreeding, disease, and worst of all, perhaps a simple "why bother" malaise that could make the project untenable.

Imagine mankind surviving in the hundreds of thousands only. The ecosystem is in a horrendous tailspin. Simply getting food and water is a titanic effort, let alone putting together a colony ship and getting off this rock. I can easily see mankind going extinct. No ecosystem, no mankind.

[tantalus]

A planetary super-event might be easily survivable by millions of people... initially. It's what happens in the decades, centuries to come that makes survival of the species doubtful. For example, if Yellowstone lets loose and obliterates most of North America, folk in Asia might initially only see some spectacular sunrises. But the event could trigger a positive feedback loop in a direction that could turn the planet back into snowball Earth, or perhaps a hot and dessicated husk.

Even then, advanced societies might have extensive underground facilities with hydroponics, atomic power, all the things you'd think would be nice to have in an apocalyptic scenario. But now you've got inbreeding, disease, and worst of all, perhaps a simple "why bother" malaise that could make the project untenable.

Imagine mankind surviving in the hundreds of thousands only. The ecosystem is in a horrendous tailspin. Simply getting food and water is a titanic effort, let alone putting together a colony ship and getting off this rock. I can easily see mankind going extinct. No ecosystem, no mankind.

Regarding supervolcanoes
Yes, I agree that the indirect effects are the most serious, but note that I said conceivable not certain. There have been a siginificant number of such eruptions identified to have occurred in the last 10 million years, a number since the evolution of Homo sapiens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) and we survived such events without advanced technology, as have many other "higher" animals.

[Chogy]

Right from the Wiki article:

This change in temperature is hypothesized to have resulted in the world's human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.

Admittedly, these were primitive hunter-gatherers, but I think we'd be nuts to overestimate our staying powers relative to volcanos, asteroid impact, and the biggest, climactic catastrophe, the latter having nothing to do with global warming... more a result of another event.

Life on a snowball earth? The theory is still controversial, but the evidence is not insignificant. And there could easily be an extinction-level rock floating around out there that would drop superheated plasma all over the surface of the earth, killing everything larger than an insect outright, or worse, split the mantle deeply enough to make the earth look like it did a mere million years after the solar system formed... a glowing red molten blob. And there'd be nothing NASA or anybody else could do to stop it.

[Chogy]

Ooh, here's a good one... a wandering neutron star, only 10 miles in diameter, strays too closely to the Earth. I suspect seed banks, DNA facilities, and secret bunkers, would be little help.



Magnificent art by a Mr. Christian Joore.

[Monash]

Leaving aside all the negative possibilities for a second there are also a couple of positive options as well. For instance we have Mars and Venus in our backyards, two pieces of realestate that are just asking for the right proprty developer to come along, spruce them up a bit and then sell off to young families. I'm talking about Terraforming of course.

Mars would probably be the best candidate (less work required) and we are are not talking about anything that could be even started for at least a century but I kind of like the idea of a future where humanity works together on a grand project that would take generations to complete and see the human race building new biomes and speading life out from Earth rather than just destroying it. :)

[Minskaya]

Hidden in Einstein’s Math: Faster-than-Light Travel?
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