Talk-Polywell.org

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:52 am**

djolds1 wrote:Assuming Dr. White's approach works, I'd still want a minimum boost factor of 1000 at a starter velocity of 0.1c - minimum effective velocity 100c. That implies a minimum boost factor of 10,000 at a starter velocity of 0.01c - achievable in 3.5 days assuming a 1g QVT or MLT. Limitations of the boost would seem to put a premium on high initial velocities.

Interesting limitation on FTL - detonation of the field.

Alpha Centauri in 15 days? Yeah, I guess I can live with that (actually, I am not counting the days necessary to accelerate and decelerate to 0.1c)

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 12:13 pm**

djolds1 wrote:
paulmarch wrote:
djolds1 wrote:Looks like a restatement of claims made in his paper "Warp Field Mechanics 101" - referenced by Paul March upthread.

viewtopic.php?t=2215&postdays=0&postord ... start=1136

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

A "boost" of 100, combined with a 'starter velocity' of 0.1c, yields an apparent velocity of 10c.

100 * 0.1 = 10

I was whining to Paul about wanting a higher boost.

Tho it looks like Dr. White has been able to reduce the required quantity of negative matter to 1 order of magnitude less than the minimum cited in the previous paper. Was 5000kg, now <500kg.
If Dr. White's 4D+ theoretical conjecture on this warp field topic is correct, and I say if for we have no data yet to back it up until our back-ordered replacement laser shows up in the lab, we should be able to make the required inertially exotic mass requirement as small at desired dependent on the selected starting velocity, desired boost factor and how fast we can vary the warp-field's potential energy field about its mean value, which is dependent on how much power our RF generators can handle. However the higher the effective boost velocity becomes, the more ac potential energy one has to store in the warp-field and we all know what can happen to pressure vessels when they are pushed too far...

Best,
Assuming Dr. White's approach works, I'd still want a minimum boost factor of 1000 at a starter velocity of 0.1c - minimum effective velocity 100c. That implies a minimum boost factor of 10,000 at a starter velocity of 0.01c - achievable in 3.5 days assuming a 1g QVT or MLT. Limitations of the boost would seem to put a premium on high initial velocities.

Interesting limitation on FTL - detonation of the field.

Alpha Centauri in 15 days? Yeah, I guess I can live with that

(actually, I am not counting the days necessary to accelerate and decelerate to 0.1c)

days of travel (at 100c) to the 6 most Earthlike planets already discovered

Gliese 581g - 80 days
Gliese 667Cc - 80 days
Kepler 22b - 2190 days (6 years, and its six years ship time, since at 0.1C relativistic effects are negligible for the total travel time)
HD 85512 b - 131 days
Gliese 163c - 178 days
Gliese 581 d - 73 days

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 4:06 pm**

Ideally, more than 100c would be desirable. The nearest habitable planets are probably 100-150 lyrs out, and having lots of choices would require going out 300 lyrs or so. You want 500 lyrs to be within 1 year travel time.

Assuming that the Q-thruster/Woodard Mach propulsion device gives you 1G acceleration, you need a month to get up to 0.1c, then the transition to the warp/hyper drive. 1 month deceleration will be needed at the destination. 100c means it takes 3 years to go 300 lyrs. We want to reduce this to 3-6 months, which would be like an extended trip on a cruise ship, for colonist to travel to the new worlds. A shorter trip time of 3-6 months would reduce the transportation cost to, say, $50-100K per person, a reasonable amount for a middle-class engineer seeking to make a new life for themselves on one of the new worlds.

Assuming it takes 20-30 years to commercialize this technology, roughly the same timescale for robust rejuvenation with SENS and synthetic biology. Consider a package deal, combining the transportation to the new worlds with SENS rejuvenation (could even be undergone on the ship while in transit!) for a nice low price!

Consider life in an off-world colony! The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:07 pm**

For the longer distances, the discriminating intergalactic adventurer always chooses Wormholes-R-Us for his transportation needs. Get your free brochure today!

To be serious, I think it's about time Dr. White submitted some of his ideas for peer review. Seems out of place the taxpayer is providing him with an entire lab and staff to check his ideas without a single paper published.

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:30 pm**

AcesHigh wrote:
djolds1 wrote:Assuming Dr. White's approach works, I'd still want a minimum boost factor of 1000 at a starter velocity of 0.1c - minimum effective velocity 100c. That implies a minimum boost factor of 10,000 at a starter velocity of 0.01c - achievable in 3.5 days assuming a 1g QVT or MLT. Limitations of the boost would seem to put a premium on high initial velocities.

Interesting limitation on FTL - detonation of the field.
Alpha Centauri in 15 days? Yeah, I guess I can live with that (actually, I am not counting the days necessary to accelerate and decelerate to 0.1c)

Yup - 0.1c requires 35 days accel & 35 days decel at 1g; making 0.01c much sweeter - 1 week total for accel/decel. That or inertial dampers are requisite - even 10g would be killer.

GIThruster wrote:For the longer distances, the discriminating intergalactic adventurer always chooses Wormholes-R-Us for his transportation needs. Get your free brochure today!

Depends on how high you can tweak the boost. At a certain point, wormholes become superfluous. Tho yes, more than a few SFnal settings have contemplated "dual mode" FTL - hyperdrives + stargates.

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 8:35 pm**

Quite so. 6 years to somewhere like Kepler 22b is quite acceptable if the ship takes a wormhole with it and everything that arrives after 6 years is basically instantaneous.

Is there some sort of reason why you can't carry a wormhole inside a warp bubble? Is there too much bending/stretching of space-time going on and does the whole thing explode or something?

OTOH, I get a vague sense of irony in the last several posts suggesting travel time needs to be even shorter. Is it deliberate? Given the limitations we've worked under for decades, some sort of propellantless space-drive that simply allows us to reach relativistic speeds (0.1 to 0.99C) with economically feasible spacecraft would be an enormous and unprecedented breakthrough.

I guess it is deliberate - there's a looking the gift horse in the mouth comment somewhere recently up-thread...

I like the off-world colony transportation and SENS idea, sounds a bit like something out of the Bladerunner universe - just change the date from 2016 to 2046 and there you go.

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 11:12 pm**

I think if the Woodard/White stuff is for real, commercialization will still take a good 10-20 years. This is about the same time period SENS ought to become available. I don't expect any kind of FTL by 2016. More like 2036. Hence my half-factitious comment about the package deal of SENS and transportation to the new worlds.

I think the propulsion device (sub-light) will come first. Although Woodward's work has me semi-convinced that such a propulsion device is possible, I'm definitely not convinced any kind of wormhole/FTL is possible. This has always been the more speculative part of this technology to me.

Also, the new worlds have to be found. I think they are a lot less common than most people assume. Maybe one out of a thousand G-stars has one. Building a large space telescope and using that scope to check out all those stars within, say, 200 lyrs, is going to take quite some time. Once candidates are selected, they have to be visited to determine if they really are habitable.

About money, the real market for any kind of propellant-less thruster is in conventional Earth transportation: ships, airplanes, trains, even cars and trucks if the propulsion unit can be made small and cheap enough. These are the real markets. License to Boeing, ScareBus, and all of the ship and car manufacturers. Then use the income from the royalties and licensing agreements to finance the development of the space applications (space craft, wormholes, etc.).

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:08 am**

well, I am not looking at any horses teeth. I havent even travelled through all Earth continents, I doubt I will ever be able to see all planets and systems in a 100 ly radius around Sol, even if we DO are able to travel at 100c

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:59 pm**

AcesHigh wrote:well, I am not looking at any horses teeth. I havent even travelled through all Earth continents, I doubt I will ever be able to see all planets and systems in a 100 ly radius around Sol, even if we DO are able to travel at 100c

we still have that cheap to LEO to do first

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2012 8:18 pm**

paperburn1 wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:well, I am not looking at any horses teeth. I havent even travelled through all Earth continents, I doubt I will ever be able to see all planets and systems in a 100 ly radius around Sol, even if we DO are able to travel at 100c
we still have that cheap to LEO to do first

I am expecting Woodward and Paul March to solve that little... annoyance

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2012 8:59 pm**

You know the other thing about these? 3D printers are increasing in accuracy and in the materials used--some of the next generation could print the materials preferred for these thrusters, and some of those, like metalicarap, are open source. Once the science is worked out, a workable template for a printer wouldn't be too far around the corner. Once that happens...

You could build a freaking spaceship in your garage. Flying Winebago anyone?

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2012 10:09 pm**

I've had my eye on 3D printing since it was called laser sintering and applied to the ceramics we're always interested in. The problem is that in all likelihood, the geometry we would use is based upon many, very-thin layers of ceramic separated by electrodes. 3D printing only applies to items constructed all of the same material.

There are currently better ways of forming these arrays of thin ceramics and electrodes, especially including PiCeramic's co-firing system for monolithic actuators.

But yeah, we even identified the kind of laser sintering machine we;d need to do our own in house work. Lock-Mart has one. they're $1 Million each. Only superficially like your $500 3D printer.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:01 am**

AcesHigh wrote:well, I am not looking at any horses teeth. I havent even travelled through all Earth continents, I doubt I will ever be able to see all planets and systems in a 100 ly radius around Sol, even if we DO are able to travel at 100c

I have missed Australia (extremely ironic, all things considered) and Antartica. Although, I have been purdy darn close to Antartica, and my dad has been there (and Australia).

I guess I have some more time to cross off the last "two". We'll see.

Pisco Sours anyone?

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:41 am**

ladajo wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:well, I am not looking at any horses teeth. I havent even travelled through all Earth continents, I doubt I will ever be able to see all planets and systems in a 100 ly radius around Sol, even if we DO are able to travel at 100c
I guess I have some more time to cross off the last "two". We'll see.

just go to Ushuaia (Argentina). Its close enough to Antartica

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:49 pm**

Paul, as you may know, these Sonny White news you posted here were reproduced at NextBigFuture, and there are over 50 comments to the post.

these ones interested me... can you explain, please?

jonathanmccabe • 2 days ago
Say the space ship has a velocity of 0.1c to the left to one observer, and 0.1c to the right to another observer, in what dirrection is the 10c after the boost is applied? I would have said relative velocity but that is so 1800s.
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Brett_Bellmore • 2 days ago • parent
THAT, I would say, is a key question. This whole, "Throw the switch, and you're going a hundred times faster" business begs the question of, a hundred times faster relative to what coordinate system? You can't go a hundred times faster in EVERY coordinate system, so the very idea suggests a preferred frame of reference. Which would make a hash of general relativity.

I'm comfortable with making a hash of general relativity, (ANY theory is subject to falling to contrary evidence.) but it would be a pretty big deal.
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drewmandan • 2 days ago • parent
It's not a big deal. Even though the theory is built on relativity, it turns out that 99.999999% (not an exaggeration) of spacetime is all in the same frame that is conveniently referred to as "flat space". So although it's possible that there's someone falling into a black hole (or some other weird section of curved spacetime) somewhere that sees something different, almost everyone will agree on what they see.
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Brett_Bellmore • a day ago • parent
I think you've missed the point: Imagine you're sitting out in inter-galactic space, (To make the spacetime as flat as it gets.) between two galaxies which are approaching each other. You're traveling simultaneously towards both galaxies at 100kps, because they're approaching each other at 200kps.

You throw the switch. Suddenly your speed is "boosted" by a factor of 100 times. You're now going 10,000kps towards one galaxy, and... 10,000kps towards the other??? Can't happen, that would require the galaxies to change their relative speeds, too.

"Multiplying" your speed by a "boost" is a nonsensical concept without a preferred frame of reference to decide which way you end up going.

Now, I could see this reducing the amount of thrust needed to accelerate after the drive is engaged, it could do something like that without violating relativity. But it can't change your speed when you throw the switch.
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drewmandan • 19 hours ago • parent −
Brett_Bellmore: Does the boost have a direction?

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