Large Hardon Collider

[myreality]

That is potentially amazing news, looking forward to seeing how this turns out, because in addition to being useable in space exploration, could this engine also not potentially remove the need for any form of traditional fuels, I mean, way far in the future, but even so?

From what I understand from other people explaining this is that solar radiation and or a small amount of electricity is needed. So can have best unlimited thrust for our solar system.

[Drai]

From what I understand from other people explaining this is that solar radiation and or a small amount of electricity is needed. So can have best unlimited thrust for our solar system.

I'll have to look into it, but if it's something like "The prupulsion is directly related to the amount of energy put into it." Then by that logic I could see Elon Musk building an engine that uses the tesla car batteries to activate the reaction in a similar way to how a combustion engine uses gasoline explosions to drive each cylinder.

Press down on the "gas" pedal to increase the amount of electricity that is being used in the reaction to increase forward or backward momentum, not sure how you would switch from forward to reverse efficiently since the cylindrical shape of the EM engine is required.

I'm honestly not sure how this whole thing will go, but can you imagine being able to launch ships into orbit simply by charging a battery for long enough to provide enough energy to properly power the reaction? some of the future is starting to give me hope even when other parts are bringing me down :D

[dasva]

Been awhile since I looked into it and it's not exactly well defined yet but last I saw it wasn't exactly a super energy efficient way to travel so far so expecting it to run well off of a small battery might be hopeful at least for now. One of the reasons it's pushed for space is just the fact that combustion isn't a particularly efficient form of energy production especially when the extra weight of it greatly increases the amount you need just to get into space but once you are up there you don't need as much. Plus I'd imagine a system like this is inherently a bit safer less burning/moving parts and all in a place where repairs/maintenance aint easy. I'd imagine a vehicles big enough to use nuclear plants also likely could just throw as much juice as they wanted into them so if it works well could see people trying to use them on boats maybe

[BaneTheBrawler]

i would guess that even if it is very efficient, it's still not going to have a high thrust to weight ratio. in space, and when you can wait 10 years to finish a mission, that's fine so it might be pretty good.


on a planet, trying to make it into orbit... yeah, i seriously doubt this is gonna cut it. LEO takes a LOT of delta v, and a TWR of at least 1. it's only the upper stages and payload engines that can have a low TWR.

[Drai]

I mean, they're saying that if this works they can build an engine to get us to mars in around 70 days? that seems to imply a rather large amount of thrust, or is that simply because you can have continuous thrust instead of controlled bursts using rocket fuel?

[dasva]

I mean, they're saying that if this works they can build an engine to get us to mars in around 70 days? that seems to imply a rather large amount of thrust, or is that simply because you can have continuous thrust instead of controlled bursts using rocket fuel?

The problem is especially in science articles is this hey in theory we can do this fails at practical applications. Like in theory our current rockets have a speed that could get them to Mars in less than a month. Of course it would require a rocket of insane size and probably more rocket fuel than we are capable of making in a reasonable time frame but hey rocket propulsion can go that fast. This is often due to people with no scientific background getting a tiny bit of info from real scientist and then feel the need to use their English degree to it's fullest to make it sound even more clickbaity. See Sath's rants on recent pages

[BaneTheBrawler]

i would guess because you can have continuous... and also because you don't need to carry nearly as much fuel. mass savings = faster acceleration = shorter travel time. also money savings, because LEO is fucking expensive.


but, as i've said before, i'm just a KSP enthusiast so my knowledge is all general theory. spaceships for little green men on a tiny unreasonably dense planet operate differently from our spaceships. Sath's the Astrophysicist.

[zoobernut]

I mean, they're saying that if this works they can build an engine to get us to mars in around 70 days? that seems to imply a rather large amount of thrust, or is that simply because you can have continuous thrust instead of controlled bursts using rocket fuel?

In space you are only dealing with momentum not friction so the amount of thrust needed is a lot less isn't it?

[BerenTebogo]

In space you are only dealing with momentum not friction so the amount of thrust needed is a lot less isn't it?

Need to get up to that velocity somehow.

[BerenTebogo]

Also I'm abstaining from commenting too much on this as there are only two options available to me:

1: give really layman explanation that people can understand, but then will argue with me about implications - which I don't want to deal with.

2: Address the advanced electromagnetic and quantum physics at a level that isn't able to be easily brought down for this forum and have a post get lost in the "but what if this!?" posts.

Unfortunately, I can't address any of the engineering problems or applications as I don't engineer and also don't strictly care. Bane raises good points that you should all pay attention to. Space travel is a delicate, time-dependent, ballet of balancing mass, velocity, acceleration and deceleration, changing direction, etc.

Tl;dr: photons are massless, but have momentum. Abuse wonkiness of reference frames.
It does not, in any way, go against any law of physics. It is essentially a really clever and advanced application of a homework problem every single physics and engineering graduate student does in their electrodynamics class. It is a really, really, really confusing concept even for us. Radiation reaction forces are some fucking shit.

Also for the few of you who actually care, you should know by now to not just read sciencedirect articles and the like and come here and expect to have a discussion. C'mon. Go at least read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion of the relevant papers.

[Roranora]

You also need to slow down/prepare to land on Mars, as fast as we're talking here. I doubt the rate we reach Mars is really so important if we can't cushion the landing and keep care of equipment. Now.. this technology may prove useful for here with thrusts in the opposite direction?

[Psion]

unless they uncovered some wonky loophole in physics that turns out to be a major breakthrough in propulsion i doubt this will ever be used to get vehicles into space, and even less so to propel vehicles on the ground. (why bother when you already got a handy dandy surface to serve as your opposite reaction? aka the ground) that said, unless this is a real effect WHICH IM HOPING IT IS its not going to be doing anything anywhere.

that said, right now you have your launch vehicle full of fuel to carry a payload into orbit, and much of that payload is fuel to get the thingie you're actually using to wherever it is it's supposed to go. once that payload of fuel runs out, its done and dead, no more course corrections, hope you got it where you wanted to. if this drive works, you can dedicate far more of that payload weight to actual instruments, solar panels or plutonium or whatever you're using as an energy source, shielding, whathaveyou, batteries... allowing for either larger equipment to be sent up, or lowering the price (due to a lighter payload requiring less fuel to launch into orbit), or both. then you can just take energy from solar panels, or the plutonium, and use some of that stored energy for propulsion. it won't matter too much if it's inefficient or slow, because it would be continuous and not run out, and there's pretty much no friction working against your propulsion in space. this would allow for low orbiting satellites to counter drag from the wisps of earth atmosphere indefinitely. and while a force equal to a penny pushing down on you aint much, it's constantly working as long as the powers there... it adds up.

[BerenTebogo]

Wiki article about one of the major underlying physical principles used in the EM drive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham–Lorentz_force

Enjoy.

[Psion]

You also need to slow down/prepare to land on Mars, as fast as we're talking here. I doubt the rate we reach Mars is really so important if we can't cushion the landing and keep care of equipment. Now.. this technology may prove useful for here with thrusts in the opposite direction?

as far as this goes, you're right you will probably need fuel for landing on planets, unless the object you're landing on is very very small. that said, a ton of the fuel in a ship is A) launching the bloody thing out of earths soupy atmosphere and gravity well and B) redirecting the huge amount of velocity it already has being an object from earth going around our giant mass known as the sun, so that it goes to wherever it is you're going. you can make this a bit easier using gravity assists from larger planets, but regardless most of the payloads fuel weight is going to be setting the course, not landing, unless you're trying to land on a gas giant somehow... and at that point your main worry is the horrifically thick pressures. you can use that to your advantage by having heat shields to bleed off some speed via friction, but even then you're going to run into the problem of the pressure crushing your expensive science thingie while the intense heat turns it to slag long before you have to worry about the massive g-forces deeper in the planet assisting it with it's speedy meeting with the metallic hydrogen/space kraken core.

so then you just have the planets without atmosphere to worry about, and the rocky planets with one... and all of them are smaller than earth, and thus need less fuel to land safely. on top of that, landing takes less fuel than going up. this is because when your going ^ this way, gravity is going v this way and negating some of your upward momentum. actually, a lot of it, which means you need to counter all of gravity's force PLUS have a good chunk of extra ^ force to actually get off the ground. on the other hand, going down, you're trying to counteract gravity, but you don't care about going past -9.8 m/s or whatever the g force of the object you're landing on is. you just want the forces to mostly cancel for a gentle landing. if the planet has an atmosphere, you can use that to your advantage and slow down even further using less fuel via friction.

[Roranora]

They made some gnarly avalanche parachute things to land the rovers long ago. That's all I was thinking about when people were posting like we should just nonchalantly and continuously accelerate en route to Mars.

[myreality]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...ranch-gas-leak

Tesla just won a bid to supply grid-scale power in Southern California to help prevent electricity shortages following the biggest natural gas leak in U.S. history. The Powerpacks, worth tens of millions of dollars, will be operational in record time—by the end of this year.
Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries. Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed.
"The storage is being procured in a record time frame," months instead of years, said Yayoi Sekine, a battery analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It highlights the maturity of advanced technologies like energy storage to be contracted as a reliable resource in an emergency situation."

[myreality]

http://futurism.com/its-official-were-going-to-mars/

A bipartisan bill was passed by the U.S. Senate committee that oversees NASA space projects. The bill would allocate $19.5 billion in funds to NASA in 2017, but it has a critical mission for the space agency: send men to Mars.

[myreality]

http://www.sciencealert.com/life-on-...s&limitstart=1

While NASA researchers are trying to figure out how a mysterious cloud appeared over Titan, Saturn’s methane-covered moon, others have been trying for years to understand something completely different: could life exist there?

After all, the frozen moon might not have any oxygen in its atmosphere, but it does appear to have a whole lot of other things that remind us of home – including mountain chains, stable pools of liquid on its surface, and thick, smoggy atmosphere.

Alright guys I need input on this that can destroy my hopes and dreams.

[myreality]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36901867

Ice Bucket Challenge funds gene discovery in ALS (MND) research

The Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral in 2014 has funded an important scientific gene discovery in the progressive neurodegenerative disease ALS, the ALS Association says.
Scientists have identified a new gene contributing to the disease, NEK1.
The Ice Bucket Challenge has raised $115m (£87.7m) from people pouring cold water over themselves and posting the video on social media.
It was criticised as a stunt, but has funded six research projects.

FUCK YEA! I actually did this with a group of people to raise money back in 2014, ecstatic that something actually came from it.

[myreality]

http://gizmodo.com/two-space-agencie...ing-1787614033

A joint mission led by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos arrives at Mars next week, and its first order of business will be to make history. If all goes well, NASA is about to lose its bragging rights as the only space agency to successfully land probes on the Red Planet.

ExoMars, an astrobiology mission designed to hunt for signs of geologic and biological activity on Mars, is on track to reach orbit on October 19th. When it arrives, the mission’s two components—a Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a Schiaparelli lander—will part ways. The TGO will insert itself into a low-altitude orbit and begin scanning the Martian atmosphere for methane, water vapor, and other trace gases. Schiaparelli, meanwhile, will attempt to reach the surface in one piece.

Landing on Mars is hard, and neither the ESA nor the Russians have a great track record. In the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union sent a slew of probes to the Red Planet, all of which crashed, died shortly after impact, or missed their target entirely. In 2003, the ESA’s Beagle 2 lander made it to the surface, but its solar panels failed to deploy, and it lost contact with Earth. In 2011, the Russians launched a space probe intended for Mars’ moon Phobos. It never made it out of low Earth orbit, eventually falling back and burning up in our atmosphere.



In other words, ExoMars is arriving at its destination with some baggage and a lot to prove. On October 16th, Schiaparelli and TGO will separate. Three days later, the lander will enter Mars’ atmosphere. The angle has to be absolutely perfect, otherwise the probe will come in too hot and burn up, or bounce back into space. If all goes well, Schiaparelli with then deploy a braking parachute, followed by three sets of hydrazine thrusters. All the while, it will be collecting data to characterize the structure of the Martian atmosphere and its intended landing site.

The entire sequence is pre-programmed, and Schiaparelli only has one shot. There are no do-overs should anything go wrong.

Lucky for the ESA and Roscosmos, Schiaparelli’s main goal is demonstrate landing technology. If there is a problem, engineers will study it carefully and incorporate whatever lessons they learn into the next phase of the ExoMars mission—a bigger and longer-lived science lander that ships off in 2020. So while everyone is hoping to stick the landing next week, failure to do so is not a catastrophe.

One way or another, this will be an exciting mission to watch.

Woot, beginning of a new era if this becomes a success.