NASA has a ‘warp drive’ that could zip people to the moon in just hours

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Amy Willis for Metro.co.uk


http://i.imgur.com/uj6WB9Z.jpg

Nasa has finally invented a ‘warp drive’ that could take people to the moon in just a few hours.

Scientists have quietly been testing a new drive that would enable spacecrafts to travel faster than the speed of light.

The hope is that one day this will allow humans to reach the moon in just four hours.

http://i.imgur.com/JXnDe5S.jpg

The new ‘warp’ drive works on an electromagnetic system, which creates thrust from electrical energy without rocket fuel.

The ‘EmDrive’ engine bounces microwaves around in a closed container – providing thrust from nothing except solar energy to power the microwaves.

Technically – according to current understanding of physics – this should be impossible.

This should violate the laws of ‘conservation of momentum’, whereby the momentum of a system is constant if there are no external forces.

The implications for the new drive are huge – without needing fuel, satellites could be half the size.

Humans could also travel further into space than ever before.

[DemonGeminiX]

http://i.imgur.com/hnC1zqt.jpg

[Pony]

umm.....

I've a feeling that 4 hours at faster than light speeds would take them to A moon just fine. They might overshoot OUR moon by a little bit.

[Oofty Goofty]

Maybe they just wouldn't set it to 11.

[Pony]

Technically not a warp drive, and FTL travel? yea right. Where did you find this article from anyhow? :lol:

[deebakes]

:fbd:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

George Dvorsky - io9


http://i.imgur.com/V9M5Qw7.jpg

Last year, NASA’s advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum.

NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. There’s also a major discussion going on about the engine and the physics that drives it at the site’s forum.

http://i.imgur.com/4rc71vH.png
COMSOL Magnetic Field Surface Distribution (NASA Eagleworks).

The EM drive is controversial in that it appears to violate conventional physics and the law of conservation of momentum; the engine, invented by British scientist Roger Sawyer, converts electric power to thrust without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves within a closed container. So, with no expulsion of propellant, there’s nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum during acceleration. Hence the skepticism. But as stated by NASA Eagleworks scientist Harold White:


[T]he EM Drive’s thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) behaving like propellant ions behave in a MagnetoHydroDynamics drive (a method electrifying propellant and then directing it with magnetic fields to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction) for spacecraft propulsion.

The trouble with this theory, however, is that it might not work in a closed vacuum. After last year’s tests of the engine, which weren’t performed in a vacuum, skeptics argued that the measured thrust was attributable to environmental conditions external to the drive, such as natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating.

The recent experiment, however, addressed this concern head-on, while also demonstrating the engine’s potential to work in space. (Image: NASA Eagleworks.)


The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.

After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry.

Serious inquiry, indeed. It’s crucial now that these tests be analyzed, replicated, and confirmed elsewhere. A peer-review and formal paper would also seem to be in order lest we get too carried away with these results. But wow. Just wow.

It’s still early days, but the implications are mind-boggling to say the least. A full-fledged EM drive could be used on everything from satellites working in low Earth orbit, to missions to the Moon, Mars, and the outer solar system.

http://i.imgur.com/csWzRN9.jpg

EM drives could also be used on multi-generation spaceships for interstellar travel. A journey to Alpha Centauri, which is “just” 4.3 light-years away, suddenly wouldn’t be so daunting. An EM drive working under a constant one milli-g acceleration would propel a ship to about 9.4% the speed of light, resulting in a total travel time of 92 years. But that’s without the need for deceleration; should we wish to make a stop at Alpha Centauri, we’d have to add another 38 years to the trip. Not a big deal by any extent of the imagination.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Technically not a warp drive, and FTL travel? yea right. Where did you find this article from anyhow? :lol:

Just posted a better article about it

[perrhaps]

paging The Right Reverend Al Sharpton...

[Hal-9000]

Interesting as hell but I'm kind of old school thinking that with thrust, something must go somewhere....physics 101

Not sure you can have a closed system with microwaves bouncing all over hell, harness enough of that energy to move a craft through space and not have an equal reaction somewhere along the way...

my IQ is also considerably less than the scientists working on it.....so I must defer :oops:

[Goofy]

This is cool as balls :tup: If they can install these engines in buses i'll be well chuffed :lol:

[Hal-9000]

wait...you work at an autobody shop and you take the bus??


:lol: nooo

[Goofy]

Nope........ but i would if they could get me to Glasgow in 10 seconds :lol:

[Hal-9000]

I'm old school....something reassuring about thousands of pounds of rocket fuel causing thrust under my ass seems safer :lol:


this bouncing around microwaves in a contained space to go 18x faster seems a little dicey...

[Goofy]

Microwaves>Rocket fuel thrusters........... i've never cooked my dinner with rocket fuel :)

[Hal-9000]

:hand:

When they create a form of propulsion, but can't really explain how it works = time to bail :lol:

[Goofy]

:hand:

When they create a form of propulsion, but can't really explain how it works = time to bail :lol:

Boring git :hand:

[Hal-9000]

Okay...send the monkeys for a ride.


If they come back as hairy little grapes....NOOOO THANKS :lol:

[Goofy]

Okay...send the monkeys for a ride.


If they come back as hairy little grapes....NOOOO THANKS :lol:

Test it on Baltimore residents :tup:

[FBD]

I had to laugh at that too, warp drive?? :lol: gtfo

hal - all in how the thrust is leveraged ;)

ion propulsion is also EM propulsion, this is just next gen works better EM propulsion. but to assert that its going to get us anywhere close to c is laughable.

[Lambchop]

A Vietnamese prostitute once injected me with a brown liquid and I swear it took me to the moon and back in seconds.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

umm.....

I've a feeling that 4 hours at faster than light speeds would take them to A moon just fine. They might overshoot OUR moon by a little bit.

Depends which route they take :hand: