Mach Effect progress

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

AcesHigh wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:
says the most childish person on these forums. :roll:

You bear that distinction in my mind. Since your very first message, I thought of you as an idiot, and you have done little to convince me otherwise since.
isnt it funny how usually we think as childish of people who strongly disagree with us? :roll:

I don't mind people disagreeing with me. If they have facts to back up their argument, I will look at their evidence. If it is convincing, I will change my opinion and conclude I have learned something.

It is those people who espouse out of ignorance, and base their decisions on faulty assumptions or lack of knowledge for which I have no use. They do us all a disservice by creating an ocean of polluted facts with which to confuse the more ignorant folk.


AcesHigh wrote: and of course you will defend GIThruster. It seems you agree with him in most matters. I would never expect you to find his attitudes childish. Expecting such thing from you, now, THAT would be childish.

I am keeping an open mind. I am not so convinced of some of the conclusions he has put forth as is he, but I am willing to consider the possibility that some of what he says may be correct.

Now if YOU had said the same thing, I would dismiss it all as a kookery, because I already have a predisposition to not take what you write seriously. HIM I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

There may be something to it, but the evidence I have seen so far does not justify such extensive conclusions, but I am willing to listen and see further evidence. I would prefer that a discussion regarding UFOs be on a separate thread in General, rather than in conjunction with a thread discussing the Mach effect thruster.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

AcesHigh
Posts: 655
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Post by AcesHigh »

ok, it seems the footage was from Shuttle STS-48, in 1991

from a quick search

"1991

STS-48 incident
Video taken during mission STS-48 of Space Shuttle Discovery while in orbit on September 15, 1991 shows a flash of light and several objects that appear to be flying in an artificial or controlled fashion.
NASA explained the objects as ice particles reacting to engine jets. James Oberg claimed that the flash was from a thruster firing.[1] Philip C. Plait discussed the issue in his book Bad Astronomy, agreeing with NASA.[2]
Dr. Jack Kasher analyzed the movement of the objects in 1996, and found five arguments that the footage could not depict ice particles.[3] However, Lan Fleming found discrepancies in the timestamps in a later version of the video first released by the NASA FOIA office in 1999, leaving some conclusions indeterminate.[4] James Oberg presented a paper at Purdue University that disputed Kasher's five arguments and showed how illumination conditions and thruster firings were capable of producing the sequences in question.[5] He has also posted data and telemetry records that support a prosaic explanation.[6]
Lan Fleming analyzed the movements of the objects and the flash of light that preceded the abrupt change in the course of the objects, and concluded that the exhaust plume from one of the shuttle's reaction control system rockets could not have produced the flash of light.[7][8][9][10]
Mark J. Carlotto came to the conclusion that relatively brief firings of shuttle thruster rockets acting on nearby debris particles could not explain the prolonged periods of acceleration indicated by the curved paths of the unidentified objects.[11][12] However, prolonged periods of smooth acceleration can be explained by atmospheric drag on microscopic ice particles, even though the atmosphere is extremely tenuous at the altitude of the orbiting shuttle.[13] Carlotto also noted that at the end of the event, the shuttle's camera panned down, showing a number of objects moving below the shuttle, and one of the objects appeared to consist of three lobes arranged in a triangular pattern.[14]"


Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) analized the incident in the book Bad Astronomy. Unfortunatelly, the pages with the analysis seem to not be available for free on the web.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eInn ... &q&f=false


analysis of the incident my Mark Carloto
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jo ... rlotto.pdf

analysis by James Olberg
http://www.jamesoberg.com/99purdue-48-speech.pdf

AcesHigh
Posts: 655
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Post by AcesHigh »

Diogenes wrote:I don't mind people disagreeing with me. If they have facts to back up their argument, I will look at their evidence. If it is convincing, I will change my opinion and conclude I have learned something.

It is those people who espouse out of ignorance, and base their decisions on faulty assumptions or lack of knowledge for which I have no use. They do us all a disservice by creating an ocean of polluted facts with which to confuse the more ignorant folk.
easier said than done. Never seen that attitude on these forums, from you. It seems contrary evidence to your opinion is hardly ever convincing.


I am keeping an open mind. I am not so convinced of some of the conclusions he has put forth as is he, but I am willing to consider the possibility that some of what he says may be correct.
oh, but thats a real possibility. You can never dismiss ALL UFO incidents as being fake.

its different from what he is asserting however, as already pointed out by others here.

Now if YOU had said the same thing, I would dismiss it all as a kookery, because I already have a predisposition to not take what you write seriously. HIM I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
very scientific from you. :lol:


I would prefer that a discussion regarding UFOs be on a separate thread in General, rather than in conjunction with a thread discussing the Mach effect thruster.


which is exactly what I asked some pages ago and GIThruster decided to ignore. But hey, it was ME who asked it, so I guess you should change your opinion about it and support UFO discussion in this thread :roll:


good thing (to myself) that unlike you, I will keep considering your (and GiThruster) points of view whenever I agree with them, and wont dismiss them ONLY because they came from you or GIThruster.

I am sure that people like you, but on opposite side of many matters, would already be dismissing ME-effects as being kookery ONLY because GIThruster supports those points.

again, that would be very unscientific.

paulmarch
Posts: 155
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 7:06 pm
Location: Friendswood, TX USA

Post by paulmarch »

djolds1 wrote:
paulmarch wrote:Just to update you on the requirements for initiating a 10m OD warp field, Sonny White's latest paper and presentation at the following NASA server shows that we don't need a Jupiter load of inertially exotic mass to initiate it as Alcubbierre’s original metric first indicated. If we are willing to make the toroidal warp field thickness thicker than a few microns and increase it to say a meter, the exotic inertial mass requirement goes down by the same orders of magnitude. And if you are really brave, having the warp field generator oscillate the warp field at high-frequencies (GHz) this feature will decrease the required exotic matter requirements down to levels measured in just a few metric tons of exotic inertial mass dependent on the required effective transport velocity of the warp bubble, i.e. 10c 100c, etc. And it appears that is a feat that one or more groups of folks have already figured out how to do and have demonstrated in our skies, no matter what their origins may be...

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 016932.pdf

Best,
How high can the boost "easily" go before requirements ratchet up to wormhole levels? A boost of 1000-10,000 would be most convenient, versus the cited 100. Tho yes, I'm looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
Dr. Eric Davis over at Earth Tech in Austin, TX indicated in his and Marc Millis' latest AIAA propulsion book that if QM has anything to say about this problem, and it probably does, the warp field propagation speed limit in flat spacetime is around 1x10^32 c. Is that a high enough velocity limit for you? Personally I'd be doing handstands if we had a starship that could generate an effective 100c propagation velocity for that would get us to our nearest neighbor star (4.3 LY) in just under 2 weeks. Of course the cost of going faster in this warp field business is the amount of potential energy that one has to cram into the warp-field, so the higher the effective warp velocity, the bigger the reactor will have to be to drive it to that level. Do you know how many GWe we are talking about using just to make a 100c capable warp drive? That is yet to be determined, but it boils down to how compliant we can make spacetime with the oscillating warp field. And remember that flat spacetime has a GRT controlled stiffness coefficient of 1/(8*Pi*G*c^4), where G is the Gravitational constant and c is the speed of light.

Best,
Paul March
Friendswood, TX

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

AcesHigh wrote:. . .do you guys believe in conspiracy theories to hide the fact aliens (or future humans more probably, considering the very humanoid and clearly ape descendent form of most reporter aliens, who look very much like human fetuses actually) visit us constantly?
I can't answer for anyone else, but although I believe there is a conspiracy here, I have no reason to believe it extends to the kinds of things you're asking about. There certainly is a conspiracy however. The US Government has conspired to deceive its people in many ways on this issue--better called a "government cover-up".. The simplest examples are things like the Condon report, and how eye witnesses of UFO's are treated here in the States as compared to everywhere else in the world. If you have to ask about the details of these very disturbing issues, this can only be because of a vast and permeating ignorance on the subject.

As much as reasonable people may like to joke about conspiracy theories and the quacks that hold them, it should be obvious that there is such a conspiracy here in the US. Scientists here cannot speak out about things like UFO's without derailing their careers BECAUSE of the conspiracy. When Jack Sarfatti spoke out about the 800 lb. guerilla in the room at the 100 Year Starship conference, and challenged his peers to acknowledge the problem, he was met with silence because everyone else there had a career to protect. Jack doesn't, so jack can say whatever he likes. The fact this dynamic exists at all is perfect evidence of a conspiracy. Again, you can find these details of how all this came about in Leslie Keans book:

http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pil ... eslie+Kean
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

AcesHigh wrote:ok, it seems the footage was from Shuttle STS-48, in 1991

from a quick search

"1991

STS-48 incident
Video taken during mission STS-48 of Space Shuttle Discovery while in orbit on September 15, 1991 shows a flash of light and several objects that appear to be flying in an artificial or controlled fashion.
NASA explained the objects as ice particles reacting to engine jets. James Oberg claimed that the flash was from a thruster firing.[1] Philip C. Plait discussed the issue in his book Bad Astronomy, agreeing with NASA.[2]
Dr. Jack Kasher analyzed the movement of the objects in 1996, and found five arguments that the footage could not depict ice particles.[3] However, Lan Fleming found discrepancies in the timestamps in a later version of the video first released by the NASA FOIA office in 1999, leaving some conclusions indeterminate.[4] James Oberg presented a paper at Purdue University that disputed Kasher's five arguments and showed how illumination conditions and thruster firings were capable of producing the sequences in question.[5] He has also posted data and telemetry records that support a prosaic explanation.[6]
Lan Fleming analyzed the movements of the objects and the flash of light that preceded the abrupt change in the course of the objects, and concluded that the exhaust plume from one of the shuttle's reaction control system rockets could not have produced the flash of light.[7][8][9][10]
Mark J. Carlotto came to the conclusion that relatively brief firings of shuttle thruster rockets acting on nearby debris particles could not explain the prolonged periods of acceleration indicated by the curved paths of the unidentified objects.[11][12] However, prolonged periods of smooth acceleration can be explained by atmospheric drag on microscopic ice particles, even though the atmosphere is extremely tenuous at the altitude of the orbiting shuttle.[13] Carlotto also noted that at the end of the event, the shuttle's camera panned down, showing a number of objects moving below the shuttle, and one of the objects appeared to consist of three lobes arranged in a triangular pattern.[14]"


Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) analized the incident in the book Bad Astronomy. Unfortunatelly, the pages with the analysis seem to not be available for free on the web.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eInn ... &q&f=false


analysis of the incident my Mark Carloto
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jo ... rlotto.pdf

analysis by James Olberg
http://www.jamesoberg.com/99purdue-48-speech.pdf

I think you have the wrong incident. If you go to YouTube, you can find video of what is described above. It is not the same incident as the video showing an object whizzing out of the way before another object passes through it's previous location at high velocity.


I've seen the videos which look like multiple particles, the video I linked is not that video. Apart from that, I think the incident was later than 1991. I'm thinking more around 1998.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

AcesHigh
Posts: 655
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Post by AcesHigh »

Diogenes wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:ok, it seems the footage was from Shuttle STS-48, in 1991

from a quick search

"1991

STS-48 incident
Video taken during mission STS-48 of Space Shuttle Discovery while in orbit on September 15, 1991 shows a flash of light and several objects that appear to be flying in an artificial or controlled fashion.
NASA explained the objects as ice particles reacting to engine jets. James Oberg claimed that the flash was from a thruster firing.[1] Philip C. Plait discussed the issue in his book Bad Astronomy, agreeing with NASA.[2]
Dr. Jack Kasher analyzed the movement of the objects in 1996, and found five arguments that the footage could not depict ice particles.[3] However, Lan Fleming found discrepancies in the timestamps in a later version of the video first released by the NASA FOIA office in 1999, leaving some conclusions indeterminate.[4] James Oberg presented a paper at Purdue University that disputed Kasher's five arguments and showed how illumination conditions and thruster firings were capable of producing the sequences in question.[5] He has also posted data and telemetry records that support a prosaic explanation.[6]
Lan Fleming analyzed the movements of the objects and the flash of light that preceded the abrupt change in the course of the objects, and concluded that the exhaust plume from one of the shuttle's reaction control system rockets could not have produced the flash of light.[7][8][9][10]
Mark J. Carlotto came to the conclusion that relatively brief firings of shuttle thruster rockets acting on nearby debris particles could not explain the prolonged periods of acceleration indicated by the curved paths of the unidentified objects.[11][12] However, prolonged periods of smooth acceleration can be explained by atmospheric drag on microscopic ice particles, even though the atmosphere is extremely tenuous at the altitude of the orbiting shuttle.[13] Carlotto also noted that at the end of the event, the shuttle's camera panned down, showing a number of objects moving below the shuttle, and one of the objects appeared to consist of three lobes arranged in a triangular pattern.[14]"


Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) analized the incident in the book Bad Astronomy. Unfortunatelly, the pages with the analysis seem to not be available for free on the web.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eInn ... &q&f=false


analysis of the incident my Mark Carloto
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jo ... rlotto.pdf

analysis by James Olberg
http://www.jamesoberg.com/99purdue-48-speech.pdf

I think you have the wrong incident. If you go to YouTube, you can find video of what is described above. It is not the same incident as the video showing an object whizzing out of the way before another object passes through it's previous location at high velocity.


I've seen the videos which look like multiple particles, the video I linked is not that video. Apart from that, I think the incident was later than 1991. I'm thinking more around 1998.
I got it from a video exactly like the one you showed, but a bit zoomed in, saying it was STS48. I suppose the video got it wrong however, since the video more closely fits the description of the 1996 STS-80


1996

STS-80 incidents
Video taken during mission STS-80 of Space Shuttle Columbia while in orbit as analyzed by Mark J. Carlotto show three different unusual phenomena on December 2, 1996: Two slow moving circular objects; a strange rapidly moving burst of light near the earth's surface; and a number of fast moving objects in space near the shuttle. The first two can be explained as shuttle debris and an unusual atmospheric phenomena, respectively. The fast moving objects in space near the shuttle appear as bright streaks, and analysis of their speeds and directions indicates that they are probably not shuttle debris or meteors.[15]
An analysis done in 1999 by former Mission Control specialist James Oberg concluded that all the objects were nearby sunlit debris.[citation needed] The report was subsequently endorsed by crewmembers Story Musgrave and Tom Jones.[citation needed] Oberg's comments on a video of the event reiterate this viewpoint.[16]


this is the link to the Wikipedia article, with sublinks to the articles with pro and con arguments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sighti ... uter_space

ScottL
Posts: 1122
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:Scott, not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing healthy about skepticism. If you want to apply some vulgar meaning and then say there's no trouble, fine, have at. In philosophy as well as in history, what entails a skeptic has a very specific meaning and it is not a healthy nor rational position.
Vulgar meaning? This is the definition via Dictionary.com, Websters, etc. The religious definition being what was then called a heretic.
a person who doubts the truth of a religion, especially Christianity, or of important elements of it
and in philosophy per the thought process:
a member of a philosophical school of ancient Greece, the earliest group of which consisted of Pyrrho and his followers, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible.
There is nothing unhealthy about being skeptical. There is something unhealthy about being willfully ignorant and/or stubborn, but not skeptical.

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Again, you're mixing terms. The "vulgar" or common use of the term "skeptic" is one that is critical of unexamined opinions. From the descriptions I made it is obvious I am not using that definition of the term. I was very deliberate to draw a distinction between critical thinkers and skeptics and it's fine for me to precise how I'm using the term.

In history and philosophy, the term "skeptic" has several very specific meanings, and especially there is a distinction between scientific skepticism and methodological skepticism. You can investigate these at your leisure. The point I was making is and remains, that this attitude that predisposes one to doubt rather than to an open and neutral stance on issues where the evidence has not yet been evaluated, is wrong. It's childish and essentially an irrational and emotional attitude passing itself off as critical thinking. Approaching each claim with doubt is no more rational than approaching each claim with trust. These are equally misguided approaches. Skeptics, are no better off than the naive. Neither is thinking skillfully.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

djolds1
Posts: 1296
Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:03 am

Post by djolds1 »

paulmarch wrote:
djolds1 wrote:How high can the boost "easily" go before requirements ratchet up to wormhole levels? A boost of 1000-10,000 would be most convenient, versus the cited 100. Tho yes, I'm looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
Dr. Eric Davis over at Earth Tech in Austin, TX indicated in his and Marc Millis' latest AIAA propulsion book that if QM has anything to say about this problem, and it probably does, the warp field propagation speed limit in flat spacetime is around 1x10^32 c. Is that a high enough velocity limit for you?
:D

Dr. White's "boost" effect seemed somewhat different from standard Alcubierre limitations. Yes, theoretical max is probably the same, but a "thicker" and "sloppier" field seemed to imply different mathematics for ramping up the dv "boost" multiplier.
paulmarch wrote:Personally I'd be doing handstands if we had a starship that could generate an effective 100c propagation velocity for that would get us to our nearest neighbor star (4.3 LY) in just under 2 weeks.
I am assuming 10% c sublight velocity max (1 month acceleration at 1g), boost of 100 = (0.1c)(100) = 10c. Which IIRC is precisely the scenario Dr. White considers in "Warp Mechanics 101." Therefore, practical 100c requires a boost of 1000. Which was my minimum "most convenient."
paulmarch wrote:Of course the cost of going faster in this warp field business is the amount of potential energy that one has to cram into the warp-field, so the higher the effective warp velocity, the bigger the reactor will have to be to drive it to that level. Do you know how many GWe we are talking about using just to make a 100c capable warp drive? That is yet to be determined, but it boils down to how compliant we can make spacetime with the oscillating warp field. And remember that flat spacetime has a GRT controlled stiffness coefficient of 1/(8*Pi*G*c^4), where G is the Gravitational constant and c is the speed of light.
Thanks. :)

And yes, I know I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. :twisted:
Vae Victis

ScottL
Posts: 1122
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:Again, you're mixing terms. The "vulgar" or common use of the term "skeptic" is one that is critical of unexamined opinions. From the descriptions I made it is obvious I am not using that definition of the term. I was very deliberate to draw a distinction between critical thinkers and skeptics and it's fine for me to precise how I'm using the term.

In history and philosophy, the term "skeptic" has several very specific meanings, and especially there is a distinction between scientific skepticism and methodological skepticism. You can investigate these at your leisure. The point I was making is and remains, that this attitude that predisposes one to doubt rather than to an open and neutral stance on issues where the evidence has not yet been evaluated, is wrong. It's childish and essentially an irrational and emotional attitude passing itself off as critical thinking. Approaching each claim with doubt is no more rational than approaching each claim with trust. These are equally misguided approaches. Skeptics, are no better off than the naive. Neither is thinking skillfully.
Honestly this whole back and forth has nothing to do with the term itself in my opinion. Choosing a term and then applying one's own definitions to self-gratify is common, even more so around these fora. I've come to find that only a few posters here will actually cite sources, data, etc and/or bother to read said data. It's a matter of convenience and the minute you challenge that convenience, the person goes on some other tirade.

You know I've actually asked for cited data here and got a bunch of random links with no actual "sources" just their own commentary. This is becoming more and more common here and as a person who has honestly attempted to garner views from opposite my own predisposition (some even having changed occassionally) I'm falbbergasted at the lack of mature, honest conversation. So GIThruster, apply whatever definition you see fit to whatever word you like. Personally I think I'll start defining critical thinking as the belief or process of believing blindly, regardless of whatever the original meaning was/is/or will be.

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Scott, go pick up any undergraduate primer in epistemology. I just don't have the time and energy to waste discussing this with you further.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

paulmarch wrote:
Ron:

Just to update you on the requirements for initiating a 10m OD warp field, Sonny White's latest paper and presentation at the following NASA server shows that we don't need a Jupiter load of inertially exotic mass to initiate it as Alcubbierre’s original metric first indicated. If we are willing to make the toroidal warp field thickness thicker than a few microns and increase it to say a meter, the exotic inertial mass requirement goes down by the same orders of magnitude. And if you are really brave, having the warp field generator oscillate the warp field at high-frequencies (GHz) this feature will decrease the required exotic matter requirements down to levels measured in just a few metric tons of exotic inertial mass dependent on the required effective transport velocity of the warp bubble, i.e. 10c 100c, etc. And it appears that is a feat that one or more groups of folks have already figured out how to do and have demonstrated in our skies, no matter what their origins may be...

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 016932.pdf

Best,
Paul, after a quick scan I'd say this is by far the best work I've seen come from Sonny. I'm most impressed. I would suggest just one thing I'd personally like to see.

Can we see a discussion of a relatively cheap warp vehicle? Seems to me that crunching the numbers for placing a toroid of negative mass inside the trunk of a Dragon could enable robotic and immediately afterward, manned spaceflight on the cheap. Warp 1 is enough to jump such a craft to the moon in a few minutes and then back again. This is the kind of number crunching I'd love to see.

I'd suggest if you want to so dabble, certainly give this your own thread here.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

djolds1
Posts: 1296
Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:03 am

Post by djolds1 »

GIThruster wrote:
paulmarch wrote:
Ron:

Just to update you on the requirements for initiating a 10m OD warp field, Sonny White's latest paper and presentation at the following NASA server shows that we don't need a Jupiter load of inertially exotic mass to initiate it as Alcubbierre’s original metric first indicated. If we are willing to make the toroidal warp field thickness thicker than a few microns and increase it to say a meter, the exotic inertial mass requirement goes down by the same orders of magnitude. And if you are really brave, having the warp field generator oscillate the warp field at high-frequencies (GHz) this feature will decrease the required exotic matter requirements down to levels measured in just a few metric tons of exotic inertial mass dependent on the required effective transport velocity of the warp bubble, i.e. 10c 100c, etc. And it appears that is a feat that one or more groups of folks have already figured out how to do and have demonstrated in our skies, no matter what their origins may be...

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 016932.pdf

Best,
Paul, after a quick scan I'd say this is by far the best work I've seen come from Sonny. I'm most impressed. I would suggest just one thing I'd personally like to see.

Can we see a discussion of a relatively cheap warp vehicle? Seems to me that crunching the numbers for placing a toroid of negative mass inside the trunk of a Dragon could enable robotic and immediately afterward, manned spaceflight on the cheap. Warp 1 is enough to jump such a craft to the moon in a few minutes and then back again. This is the kind of number crunching I'd love to see.
"Warp 1"???

And as far as cheap vehicles go, if negative mass sufficient for minimal warp effects is possible, MLT or QVF "reactionless" thrusters are already a done deal, so the notional Warpstar-1 should perhaps be the baseline design.
Vae Victis

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

For a prototype warp drive experiment, you want to have the smallest, cheapest robotic spacecraft possible. For better data back, you want to retrieve the spacecraft so it needs to make a round trip. A Falcon could put enough delta V on a Dragon to put it in lunar orbit given 2+ seconds jump at Warp 1. The Dragon trunk could give it the Delta V for the return jump again, in 2+ seconds. Dragon has a proven RCS and GN&C and is designed to make translunar reentries.

Whole project less than 100 million if Elon Musk does it and follow ons with astronauts and Mars missions all enabled. If NASA does it. . .say 5-10 billion and an extra ten years.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

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