mach thrusters

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chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

Thanks for the link!

Ah! Now I get it!

It looks like this all might well be the old 'there's only a plug in the wall' trick.

You stick 200A through a circuit so that the electrons have to turn around and come back again at 75kHz and you'll get;

[200A/1.6^-19C].[75000].[9.1e-31]=85uN of 'thrust' from the electron mass heading back to the stationary generator from whence it came.

...how does 85uN compare with the actual 'thrust' so far reported for this experiment?

If you take enough electrons and push them around a corner, they will produce a small force. This looks strongly like it may be the same fallacy as the microwave thruster that other chap came up with in the UK and New Scientist reported it as creating a thrust 'with just a socket plugged in the wall'.... slight clue in their own text they seemed to miss.

OK, so this experiment needs to proceed with having the power source fully on board with the 'test mass'. External power supplies will confuse the outcome of any such experiments here.

The rail gun principle (which I am describing) is well understood... but a rail gun cannot propel itself with an 'onboard' power supply. It needs a fixed external supply. If M-E thrust differs from this principle, then it has to prove it to be so by using only power supplies that are on board with the mass being 'thrusted', else the experiment will conclude nothing.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Chris, that might make sense if experiments to date had been DC. They haven't been. AC eliminates the forces you're talking about.

Truthfully, the guys surrounding the work of Woodward and March are world-class PhD's. They would never let something so obvious slip by.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

GIThruster wrote:AC eliminates the forces you're talking about.
I see no reason for that statement.

Let's say you have two parallel conductors, A and B, within a device that are electrically connected at some 'positive x' position. Whether electrons flow down A, turn around at the node and flow back up B, or whether they flow down B and back up A, it is the same momentum outcome because electrons' positive x momentum is converted to negative x momentum at that node, whichever way the current flows, therefore there is a reaction force at the node.

Now, if the power supply was on board then there would be another node somewhere else in the device in the negative x position and the momentum reaction at that node would be equal and opposite to the +ve x node (because it is all part of the same circuit, so has exactly the same current), but if that node was 'off board', because it is part of a circuit that is static somewhere else, then naturally you would see an unbalanced momentum reaction at the one node in the device.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

GIThruster wrote:Truthfully, the guys surrounding the work of Woodward and March are world-class PhD's. They would never let something so obvious slip by.
I am sure they have good PhD's. How many of them have got their PhD's for getting space ships moving by M-E thrust?

Is the 'you aren't as well educated as me/someone else, therefore I do not need to provide a logical response to your comments' argument the only one you have?

The religious hierarchy against which Gallileo fought were more highly educated in their respective fields than Gallileo was in his self-taught discipline. How does this standard response of yours square up with that situation?

Giorgio
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Post by Giorgio »

chrismb wrote:
GIThruster wrote:Truthfully, the guys surrounding the work of Woodward and March are world-class PhD's. They would never let something so obvious slip by.
I am sure they have good PhD's. How many of them have got their PhD's for getting space ships moving by M-E thrust?
Eheheh, that was a nice reply chrismb :wink:

cuddihy
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Post by cuddihy »

chrismb wrote:
GIThruster wrote:Truthfully, the guys surrounding the work of Woodward and March are world-class PhD's. They would never let something so obvious slip by.
I am sure they have good PhD's. How many of them have got their PhD's for getting space ships moving by M-E thrust?

Is the 'you aren't as well educated as me/someone else, therefore I do not need to provide a logical response to your comments' argument the only one you have?

The religious hierarchy against which Gallileo fought were more highly educated in their respective fields than Gallileo was in his self-taught discipline. How does this standard response of yours square up with that situation?
I think it's obvious now why GI thruster originally responded to your question the way he did. Chris you are a Lazy Skeptic. You don't bother to read the context, demand people hand you a diagram, so that you can pick it apart without reference to the context.

You've followed the same pattern with polywell. I think GI thruster's original response was warranted.

Btw the context you're ignoring in this case is described as to how they prevent this effect.
Tom.Cuddihy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faith is the foundation of reason.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

cuddihy wrote:I think it's obvious now why GI thruster originally responded to your question the way he did. Chris you are a Lazy Skeptic. You don't bother to read the context, demand people hand you a diagram, so that you can pick it apart without reference to the context.
I don't accept that as at all fair. If a person claims to have some new mechanism, or some piece of science, then it must be laid out in a clear, point-by-point account of an experiment so that it can be repeated.

On the contrary, to fail to prepare such material for skeptics to try out an experiment for themselves is a laziness on behalf of the experimenters, not of the skeptics who choose to side with established science before trying to piece together 20 different information sources which, at the end of deciphering such material, would almost surely be told they have misinterpreted it anyway.

There is no such thing as a lazy skeptic. There are only lazy scientists who find benefit in being imprecise and scattering their theory and work across dozens of different sources. I have a right to ask for a single source that exposes the inner workings of such a thruster, in one hit. If there is no such thing then it cannot be a 'laziness' on my behalf - are you asking me to figure out how to build one??

I reject your critique, wholly.

The problem here is that I know damned well that I can build an electrical device that, were I to plug it into the wall, that I would be able to mimic a reaction force. I know how to do that! Are you asking me to do that? What's the point?

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

PS - same applies to Polywell, though in that case the inner workings have been laid out and now we continue the 25 years wait for some solid peer-reviewed data.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

cuddihy wrote: Btw the context you're ignoring in this case is described as to how they prevent this effect.
Thank you. BTW, Chris' thesis doesn't obtain with DC either; it's just a lot more work to show how he is wrong in that case. In the case of AC, it's obvious any forces exerted by the moving electrons time average to zero.

What is most annoying is that the brilliant people doing this kind of work for years, spend an enormous amount of time thinking about these kinds of issues, and they are certainly willing to listen when others have insights to share like Chris is doing. The difference is that Chris isn't actually aware of how any of this works, and yet thinks he's got an answer to how we get thrust signatures. That's just crazy talk and a waste of everyone'e time.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

GIThruster wrote:In the case of AC, it's obvious any forces exerted by the moving electrons time average to zero.
Why?

Please address my point above. Electrons moving either to or from an electrical node will require a reaction at that node in the same direction (the vector that divides the angle between the two conductors) to get carried around that node. How can you simply skip over that point?

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Chris, you haven't thought even half way through the issue. Why bring it up when you don't know what you're saying? You haven't even asked where these experiments have their power supply. Fact is, you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

What you're considering entails a violation of conservation if the power supply in on board (as you suggested) and is a null, moot issue when the supply is not on board. Do you honestly think I have nothing better to do than correct these kinds of mistakes? If you want to be involved, there are ways for you to be so involved, but you have to do your homework and have a clue what you're talking about--and you don't.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

I did my homework by examining the sources offered. What I saw was some photos of kit that clearly did not have 200A on-board supplies. (e.g. I would expect to see something the size of a couple of big batteries - no such batteries implies off-kit power. Some electrical leads ran to the device, though I grant you those might've been monitoring leads or some such).

I do which you'd quit with the 'you don't know much' line of arguments. Just tell me a) what were the thrust levels measured - does 85uN compare with the actual measurements observed?, and b) was the experiment driven by external power?

I have not said that I think these are dismissals of the experiment, I am merely saying the conclusions are not sound whilst there are external supplies and if the thrust levels are of the order of 100uN. If you were to tell me that it was generating 100N, then I would defer to some other effect, because, clearly, electrical leads are not going to react 100's of Newtons by electron flow alone.

Y'know, you could do well to actually take on board questions about what elements of an experiment need to be 'controlled' for because others who have far less time, and far more influence over funding, that I do to generate germane points for the experiments, to avoid the results being rejected out-of-hand.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Chris, using AC, there is no way to create the forces you're talking about.

Now I don't know what experiment you're referring to because you're too lazy to say, but lets assume you're looking at the Arc Lite pendulum. The Arc Lite has a period of about 7 seconds. Any AC forces on the arm will time average to zero unless they have a frequency comparable to that of the arm. Most of the Arc Lite experiments are running up in the range of 60 Khz or so, so the kinds of forces you're pretending to have discovered are not forces at all--they time average to zero.

BTW Chris, I didn't look at your math, but its obviously wrong. There haven't been any M-E experiments to date with 200A currents. The 4th gen UFG on the Arc Lite was 400 watts, and IIRC, a few hundred volts, so a couple amps or less. Could be much less. You're conflating previous conversations about the unbuilt UFG Thin design of mine, with work in the past and that's just wrong.
Last edited by GIThruster on Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

cuddihy
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Post by cuddihy »

Chris if you really want to delve into a full experiment / critique / response thread where all considerations are fully explored (that takes time and lots of words and diagrams for context) go to the propellentless propulsion thread in advanced tab on NasaSpaceFlight forum and search for the Mahood Thesis, the ORNL critique, and the Mahood / Woodward responses.
Tom.Cuddihy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faith is the foundation of reason.

chrismb
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Post by chrismb »

cuddihy wrote:Chris if you really want to delve into a full experiment / critique / response thread where all considerations are fully explored (that takes time and lots of words and diagrams for context) go to the propellentless propulsion thread in advanced tab on NasaSpaceFlight forum and search for the Mahood Thesis, the ORNL critique, and the Mahood / Woodward responses.
No, I don't want to discuss it. Just like I don't want to discuss the finer points of swirl-combustion when I drive down to the shops. I don't need to do a career's worth of engineering study to turn a key on and fire up the engine.

I want to see a diagram of what is involved in establishing a repeatable, verifiable 'M-E effect' experiment.

I just want a diagram of the experimental build....

.{..in the first instance, I will see whether this diagram includes power from a wall-socket.....in the second it sounds like I have most of the bits already available to assemble.... }

....somehow this simple request, for a full disclosure diagram, has strained the very limits of tolerable questions, in its proponents' eyes.

This serves only to suggest the whole thing is bogus. Surely even GIT isn't so mad that he'd claim that an experiment can be repeated where the experimental setup has not been published?

I'm done here. I was just interested to see if I could build one for myself, and the answer is a resounding 'no, because you have not agreed to be subjected to M-E theory indoctrination'. This is a ludicrous response, and all due incredulity is deservedly poured on to the scheme by these replies.

All I'll say is that any such experimental device not driven by its own internal power supply cannot be relied on for experimental data.An internal power supply needs to be demonstrated at the time of presentation of any such data for it to have any credibility at all.

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