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djolds1
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Re: Retro-Causal Communications & Star Drives

Post by djolds1 »

kurt9 wrote:Speaking of wormholes, would these have to be made in space and then space craft would fly through them, like the ones in StarTrek? Or could these be made in warehouse somewhere and people just walk through them, or in the case of Hamilton's "Commonwealth", run the railroads through them?
Better question - do these wormholes "punch through" to a distant location immediately, or do they create 2 mouths, one of which will then need to be moved to a distant location STL and creates the much commented on potential for "wormhole time machines?"
kurt9 wrote:I read somewhere that the negative energy conditions necessary for the Alcubierre warp drive are much higher than those needed to make wormholes and that, therefor, it would be easier to make a wormhole than a warp drive space craft. At least according to the wormhole calculations by Haisch, Puthoff, and company. Is this true for the Woodward calculations as well?
There are a lot of studies on "low energy" Alcubierre warp metrics. Type "warp drive" into the arxiv search box. The problem with the Alcubierre family is that IIRC they need to be created and "shut down" externally. IOW you need to be present at both the points of embarkation and destination.
kurt9 wrote:In any case, wormholes seem far-fetched to me. It seems to me that the Mach thruster technology needs to be developed first.
True.
Vae Victis

pfrit
Posts: 256
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Re: Retro-Causal Communications & Star Drives

Post by pfrit »

djolds1 wrote:
kurt9 wrote:Speaking of wormholes, would these have to be made in space and then space craft would fly through them, like the ones in StarTrek? Or could these be made in warehouse somewhere and people just walk through them, or in the case of Hamilton's "Commonwealth", run the railroads through them?
Better question - do these wormholes "punch through" to a distant location immediately, or do they create 2 mouths, one of which will then need to be moved to a distant location STL and creates the much commented on potential for "wormhole time machines?"
kurt9 wrote:I read somewhere that the negative energy conditions necessary for the Alcubierre warp drive are much higher than those needed to make wormholes and that, therefor, it would be easier to make a wormhole than a warp drive space craft. At least according to the wormhole calculations by Haisch, Puthoff, and company. Is this true for the Woodward calculations as well?
There are a lot of studies on "low energy" Alcubierre warp metrics. Type "warp drive" into the arxiv search box. The problem with the Alcubierre family is that IIRC they need to be created and "shut down" externally. IOW you need to be present at both the points of embarkation and destination.
kurt9 wrote:In any case, wormholes seem far-fetched to me. It seems to me that the Mach thruster technology needs to be developed first.
True.
OK, worm-holes in real life are silly. Lets imagine that you could get enough matter with a negative energy density (Lets call it n-m). Then imagine it could be inserted into the mouth of a worm hole. The end of the n-m probe would have to be smaller than the size of the wormhole mouth. We are talking about sizes near the magnitude of plancks constant. OK, for the sake of argument, you manage to do it and expand it macro size. The worm hole is not a two-dimensioned object. It is a three dimensioned field (Lets leave out esoteric wormholes for the discussion). The reason that wormholes are always described in books and movies as two dimensional circles is for the same reason black holes are always described as whirl pools. Some artist has decided to take an educational model and treat it as reality because it looks good. The two mouths will not have moved in relation to each other so they will overlap by some very great measure (the mouths will be seperated by a similiar multiple of plancks constant). It means that an object within the field will exist in two seperate places, but that the places overlap. So now you must seperate them. This turns out to be the simplest step. It is just fantastically slow and difficult, not impossible. Now you have seperated the mouths and they are very far apart for each other. Now you must insert enough n-m to make the hole remain large enough and stable enough that when you insert normal matter, it does not shrink enough to effect the normal matter with the mouth. This turns out to be miles for something like a tennis ball, as I recall (OK, how negative the energy density is makes a real difference, but imagining truely negative energy rather than slightly negative energy is very hard on my brain and will tend to violate or step around the conservation of energy too much for me). Now you put your object into the mouth of one of the wormhole's mouths and let it pass through. Somehow (and this part I have never been clear on) you must convince your peice of normal matter that even though it entered in one mouth that is must decide to exit the wormhole from the other mouth. Remember, when you are in the mouth of the wormhole, it just means that you are actually a space that is in two places in space-time at the same time, not that you are magically transported to the other point in space-time.

Describing a wormhole in our scale is alot like the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment. It is meant to be a way to understand what is happening on the quantum level in terms that we can understand. It is not something that could be expected to actually happen. I am not suggesting that people stop thinking about wormholes and how they would work in our scale. I believe that designing time machines is a good exercise and allows us to communicate and understand the principles that govern the very small much better. But actually hope to build them? That's a different story.

OK, enough of my rant. Please fell free to mock my understanding of wormholes in general and the consistency of brain in specific. Wormholes in fiction have always been a pet peeve of mine. This really is an example of Clarke's 3rd law and is indistinguishable from magic. OTOH, it beats agruing about socialized medicine. :)
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

paulmarch
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Post by paulmarch »

kurt9 wrote:I have a question about the dielectric material necessary for the Mach experiments. Is this the major engineering hurtle right now? Is the material cited in the powerpoints, BaTiO3, sufficient for realizing a demonstration device? Or do you need a better material? What about grain size?
The current M-E experiments use COTS Vishay/Cera-Mite Y5U barium titanate alloy ceramics as the dielectric in their 500pF at 15kV cap size. It's good enough for proof of principle tests, but for a working M-E thruster, much better materials are needed with their optimized parameters dependent on the type of M-E thruster built. If it’s a rotor based UFG, then we need to extend the lifetime of the material and decrease its internal losses while keeping the e-r=5,000 or greater. For MLT's we would also need to add higher magnetic permeability to the dielectric mix as well. Smaller grain size or just going to single crystal versions like quartz crystals needs to be investigated. That's a luxury we've not been able to afford to date due to the very small resources available for this M-E research.
Paul March
Friendswood, TX

93143
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Post by 93143 »

Aero wrote:Yes exactly - so we get spacecraft energy that equals 7.454773666E+07 megatons.
No no. The multiplier applies to the rest mass energy, not the Newtonian kinetic energy.

E_k = m·c²/sqrt(1-v²/c²) - m·c², right?

So E_k = (1000000x299792458²)x(1/sqrt(1-0.9801) - 1)

which works out to E_k = 5.472x10^23 J = 130792337 Mt.
kurt9 wrote:The Philip Bono design would be for deep space craft that would lift off from a prepared space port. Say, a space craft that travels from Earth to Mars or the outer solar system. A winged craft would be better for regular air transport on Earth.
It's true that the Bono shapes take up less room on the ground for a given volume, which could be important at a commercial spaceport. For exploration or bush piloting, though, they're just not stable enough.

NASA is having this exact problem with the Altair lander; the choice of an Apollo-style vertical orientation combined with using the lander's descent stage for LOI means that the PLF has to be at least 10 metres wide, preferably 12 m or more, for a half-decent level of stability. Even then, the astronauts have to climb up and down a rather tall ladder... DIRECT v3.0 (which does support 12 m PLFs) could enable the EDS to be re-used for LOI, since its engines (6xRL-10B2 in the recommended configuration) are even more efficient than the lander's engines; this reduces the size of the descent stage (which in turn means the EDS doesn't have to get any bigger to do the extra burn) and ameliorates the problem. The recent EELV/depot-based ULA proposal uses a horizontal lander that fits in a much smaller PLF and lands with everything much closer to the ground, which might be a better idea regardless of the launch system...

Okay, so that was a bit of an off topic ramble, but there are definite disadvantages to going tall and thin. Even for a vehicle that's expected to only ever use prepared spaceports, there exists the possibility that the pilot may be forced to make an emergency landing somewhere with lots of rocks and hills, and not a lot of flat ground... and if a DC-X-style accident ever happened (failure of a landing leg), the potential damage and loss of life would probably be much less with a design like a flying saucer, or indeed anything with a vertical axis significantly shorter than the other two.

A Bono SSTO is about as short and squat as you can make a VTVL rocket due to aerodynamic considerations, but with unlimited delta-V who cares? A saucer could accelerate almost horizontally like a spaceplane, or just lazily rise up to the point where atmospheric drag ceases to be an issue. So could basically any ground-hugging design. I don't see much advantage in the Bono beyond footprint. And if we're going to be building twenty-thousand-ton interplanetary passenger liners, a small footprint turns into a disadvantage real quick...
Last edited by 93143 on Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

paulmarch wrote:
kurt9 wrote:I have a question about the dielectric material necessary for the Mach experiments. Is this the major engineering hurtle right now? Is the material cited in the powerpoints, BaTiO3, sufficient for realizing a demonstration device? Or do you need a better material? What about grain size?
The current M-E experiments use COTS Vishay/Cera-Mite Y5U barium titanate alloy ceramics as the dielectric in their 500pF at 15kV cap size. It's good enough for proof of principle tests, but for a working M-E thruster, much better materials are needed with their optimized parameters dependent on the type of M-E thruster built. If it’s a rotor based UFG, then we need to extend the lifetime of the material and decrease its internal losses while keeping the e-r=5,000 or greater. For MLT's we would also need to add higher magnetic permeability to the dielectric mix as well. Smaller grain size or just going to single crystal versions like quartz crystals needs to be investigated. That's a luxury we've not been able to afford to date due to the very small resources available for this M-E research.
Please let me know the specification for the desired dielectric for both examples of M-E thrusters. Presumably these would either have to be single crystal or, if multi-crystaline, nanosized grains. If multi-crystaline, internal stress is going to be a problem. Presumably these have to be fabricated in large sizes for a working thruster.

djolds1
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Re: Retro-Causal Communications & Star Drives

Post by djolds1 »

pfrit wrote:OK, worm-holes in real life are silly.
Perhaps. Much the same could be said of applied electrical devices c.1780. OTOH this entire topic is a WAG until a demonstrator is flown.
pfrit wrote:Lets imagine that you could get enough matter with a negative energy density (Lets call it n-m). Then imagine it could be inserted into the mouth of a worm hole. The end of the n-m probe would have to be smaller than the size of the wormhole mouth. We are talking about sizes near the magnitude of plancks constant. OK, for the sake of argument, you manage to do it and expand it macro size. The worm hole is not a two-dimensioned object. It is a three dimensioned field (Lets leave out esoteric wormholes for the discussion). The reason that wormholes are always described in books and movies as two dimensional circles is for the same reason black holes are always described as whirl pools. Some artist has decided to take an educational model and treat it as reality because it looks good.
Yes, the physical manifestation of the mouths would be spheroid regions.

Woodward cites a 10m diameter sphere of dielectric material forming a region of negative energy density inside it. If M-L thrusters work, metric engineering of various scales is no more fantasy than nuclear bombs c. 1920.
pfrit wrote:(OK, how negative the energy density is makes a real difference,
Woodward cites a Jovian mass equivalent of negative energy with his notional 10m sphere. Again, there are lots of "ifs" in this line of reasoning.
93143 wrote:Okay, so that was a bit of an off topic ramble, but there are definite disadvantages to going tall and thin. Even for a vehicle that's expected to only ever use prepared spaceports, there exists the possibility that the pilot may be forced to make an emergency landing somewhere with lots of rocks and hills, and not a lot of flat ground... and if a DC-X-style accident ever happened (failure of a landing leg), the potential damage and loss of life would probably be much less with a design like a flying saucer, or indeed anything with a vertical axis significantly shorter than the other two.
See here.
93143 wrote:A Bono SSTO is about as short and squat as you can make a VTVL rocket due to aerodynamic considerations, but with unlimited delta-V who cares? A saucer could accelerate almost horizontally like a spaceplane, or just lazily rise up to the point where atmospheric drag ceases to be an issue. So could basically any ground-hugging design. I don't see much advantage in the Bono beyond footprint. And if we're going to be building twenty-thousand-ton interplanetary passenger liners, a small footprint turns into a disadvantage real quick...
If MLT thrusters work, the idea that "engines are concentrated in one place" falls away. You can put the thrusters all over a vehicle, doing double duty for primary thrust, attitude control, hovering, etc. Instead of aircraft and spacecraft being like screw pushed ships (screw = jet nozzle/rocket bell), they'd be more like sailing ships, with the propulsive mechanism scattered up and down the structure. With that much redundancy and separation of critical systems, vehicle shape can be whatever makes economic sense. Cargo, passenger..? Or whatever shape makes military sense. Or whatever amuses the owner.
Vae Victis

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Just how cheap is the hardware for these experiments?

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

This is one reason I've started to warm to the saucer shape, although the cigar shape with decks parallel to the long axis could work too.
I prefer the sphere shape. It has many advantages, e.g. pressures and structural loads are spread evenly over the surface of a sphere. The surface area versus the volume is also optimal in this configuration.
It should also be very stable when landing on legs.
With Mach Engines, I dont see any need for wings other than for heat radiation or solar arrays or something like that.
That is just my personal preference though. Each configuration has its merrits ;)

I am glad that Paul March is commenting in this thread. It is very enlightening.

Paul, do yo have a roadmap for your research under ideal funding conditions, current conditions and say some compromise conditions (e.g. not billions, but a few millions, say Polywells level of funding)?
So we all get a better idea what you are planning to do, what each step would cost, etc.

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

I'm also curious, given Dr Woodward's health, what would happen to this research if he had to give up his work, or worse. I can't think of any perfectly polite way to say it, so I apologize for sounding so rude - but would ME research be as lucky as the Bussard Polywell research be with EMC2 picking up without too much trouble where Bussard left off?

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

The Mach Effect idea is fascinating. I have a great deal of respect for Cramer, whose QM interpretation is very illuminating (though on balance I prefer many-worlds). But forward & backward time waves makes a lot of sense, strange though it seems.

Also the simplicity of Woodward's derivation is most attractive.

I would like to see: comment from theoreticians on the consequences of Woodward's proposed ideas - internal consistency, cosmological implications, etc. If they are not dismissed out of hand there should be lots. If they are dismissed out of hand I want to see the reasons. Are there references to published papers? I have not yet done a citation search on Woodward's papers.

I would very much like to see (Paul March) a very detailed write-up of the current experimental results, apparatus, and an analysis of all the considered mechanisms which could lead to anomalies. In work like this as I know Paul knows the key is in being very careful to analyse all of the extraneous effects. I have access to most published material online but cannot yet find detailed write-ups?

From my own knowledge (if it helps) ceramic dielectrics will have many strange properties, different types of nonlinearity, including saturation at relatively low energy densities, though low k are better in this respect than high k.

The best bet for high frequency low loss high energy density capacitors is I think not ceramic, but a variety of other technologies e.g. ultra-pure glass. I am not sure whether there are the practical constraints that make k=100, E=80V/u better than say k=10, E=500V/u (the latter has higher energy density).

I also wonder whether there might not be effects that should be noticeable from nonlinear dielectrics subject to high power laser light - the much higher frequencies are obviously an advantage? Of course if such should be there and have not been noticed perhaps it is a negative!

Best wishes, Tom

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

I've just done some searching.

The only theoretical critique of Mach effect I have found is Robertson 2000
The case for inertia as a vacuum effect: a reply to Woodward & Mahoud

This is a strongly pro vacuum fluctuation cause of inertia but also makes quite a number of independent criticisms of Woodward's theory which do not relate to whether there is some other non-trivial explanation. They suggest that the trivial explanation - as an intrinsic property of matter - should be preferred to extrinsic effects on basis of Occam's Razor. This is debatable, I feel. They make a number of detailed criticims of Woodward's ideas.

I would like to find Woodward's reply to this?

Also Robertson 2006 has suggested that the various experiments results can be explained, given nonlinear interaction between electric & magnetic field, by a theory which seems to me on cursory reading to be totally weird since it violates conservation of momentum:
Electromagnetic Nonlinearity in the Dielectric Medium of Experimental EM Impulse-Momentum Systems in BaTiO3 dielectrics.

Finally, Woodward 2004 has a useful discussion of whether his observations could be result of some mundane effect. He concludes quite strongly that this is unlikely but I am not convinced yet that he has covered everything. His test, which has separate drives for capacitor & inductor, makes it easier to elimate other effects by varying indepndently the phase and amplitude of the two drive signals. I would have thought that a repetition of this experiment, with more powerful supplies, would have the best chances of confirming or denying Mach Effect? Paul would I am sure be able to comment on this.

Best wishes, Tom

ravingdave
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Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Post by ravingdave »

paulmarch wrote:
ravingdave wrote:


Yeah, that's what I get from the article too. Seems completely nonsensical to me, but supposedly the guy is an actual physicist/mathematician, and I consider Space Daily to be a legitimate news source, so I assume the math at least works.

If the math works theoretically, then the antigravity repulsion effect might work in reality. That's the main point.


David
Felber's antigravity paper is straight GRT. If you don't like it, argue with Einstein.


I'm not disputing the theory. I'm disputing the idea that you can find a star traveling at a high percentage of Light Speed and get in front of it. That's the part that sounds nonsensical.

The theory I believe. The Practicality of getting in front of a fast moving star ? Not so much.

:)


David

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

AcesHigh wrote:
:?: :?: :?:

he envisions we acelerating ships to near lightspeed before the end of the century??

ok, first we must find a NEARBY (less than 1 ly away) STAR travelling at least half the speed of light. EASY TASK!

Seriously... I cant understand it... the article says you need a star travelling at least 50% of lightspeed... to acelerate a ship!

I think this is another example of why theoreticians don't usually make good experimentalists. Anyone with common sense immediately sees the hole in this idea. That doesn't mean that the math won't work.

The theory may be sound, but the article's idea of how to exploit it is just nuts.


David

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

Skipjack wrote:
I prefer the sphere shape. It has many advantages, e.g. pressures and structural loads are spread evenly over the surface of a sphere. The surface area versus the volume is also optimal in this configuration.
It should also be very stable when landing on legs.
With Mach Engines, I dont see any need for wings other than for heat radiation or solar arrays or something like that.
That is just my personal preference though. Each configuration has its
Yes, A spherical shape is probably better than Bono's designs. You get the most volume for surface area with the least amount of stress on the frame. This seems to me the cheapest and most robust design. Such design considerations were the basis for O'neill's Bernal sphere space colony design.

Wings are useful only if you spend most of your time traveling in the atmosphere such as point to point travel on Earth, like conventional air travel.

BTW, I'm reading Myrabo's book "Lightcraft". This is about his laser launch concept. My impression is his light craft technology is a very complex technology, but offers the lowest cost space access if technologies such as Mach, Heim, and the like do not work out.

93143
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Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2007 7:51 pm

Re: Retro-Causal Communications & Star Drives

Post by 93143 »

djolds1 wrote:If MLT thrusters work, the idea that "engines are concentrated in one place" falls away. You can put the thrusters all over a vehicle, doing double duty for primary thrust, attitude control, hovering, etc. Instead of aircraft and spacecraft being like screw pushed ships (screw = jet nozzle/rocket bell), they'd be more like sailing ships, with the propulsive mechanism scattered up and down the structure. With that much redundancy and separation of critical systems, vehicle shape can be whatever makes economic sense. Cargo, passenger..? Or whatever shape makes military sense. Or whatever amuses the owner.
Yeah, but once the engines SHUT OFF, gravity takes over. I'm not talking about stability in flight; I'm talking about passive landing stability.

Even a sphere has this problem. If one of the legs breaks, well... spheres roll.

Note that I'm not specifically advocating a flying saucer. Any shape that won't fall over if it lands on a hillside and/or breaks a leg would be fine by me.

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