Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Yay Nasa!

Ignore the chinese quackery.

Yay Nasa!

I understand what it does and all the advantages it brings but I don't get how it does it. Someone needs to make a mspaint drawing for us simple people.

gogusrl_sl said:

I understand what it does and all the advantages it brings but I don't get how it does it. Someone needs to make a mspaint drawing for us simple people.

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I'm poking around, the exact details of how it works don't seem to be publicly available. Even the article has NASA saying basically "Yeah, it works, we don't want to talk about the physics."

We can go space reverse-cowgirl brother.

They have to be missing something, right? I mean I'd it works it works and who cares, but there has to be something going on to allow it to break a law of physics?

Must be an act of god, the flying spaghetti monster uses microwaves to create miracles, let's worship it.

The Ancient_sl said:

They have to be missing something, right? I mean I'd it works it works and who cares, but there has to be something going on to allow it to break a law of physics?

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They clearly don't understand it fully, they designed one to fail and it still worked.

The Ancient_sl said:

They have to be missing something, right? I mean I'd it works it works and who cares, but there has to be something going on to allow it to break a law of physics?

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Well, they said it's relativity based...I suppose he's exploiting some sort of relativistic loop hole in normal Newtonian physics? I can't even fathom how that would work.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" -Asimov

NASA tested the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster, or Q-Thruster. It creates fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, creating particle-antiparticle pairs, which ignite into a plasma and then are pushed through the thruster like a normal plasma drive. It's not reactionless, but it doesn't require stored fuel.Quantum vacuum plasma thruster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The EmDrive is also being reported on and has been tested, but it apparently breaks conservation laws and it isn't clear whether it would ever actually work (at least to me). The whole thing behind this one seems kind of fishy.EmDrive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Troll_sl said:

NASA tested the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster, or Q-Thruster. It creates fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, creating particle-antiparticle pairs, which ignite into a plasma and then are pushed through the thruster like a normal plasma drive. It's not reactionless, but it doesn't require stored fuel.Quantum vacuum plasma thruster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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That's interesting; but I thought those "random" particle creations disappeared almost instantly? How is it possible to ionize them and use them as fuel?

Big Phoenix_sl said:

I wanna know why in the hell this was never put into use;

NERVA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nuclear rocket engine, the successor to the chemical rocket engine. Its like the next logical step from chemical rockets and we had a working prototype but just said fuck it and canceled it after seeing it worked.

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Big Phoenix_sl said:

I wanna know why in the hell this was never put into use;

NERVA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nuclear rocket engine, the successor to the chemical rocket engine. Its like the next logical step from chemical rockets and we had a working prototype but just said fuck it and canceled it after seeing it worked.

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Space program lost most of its funding. Never got enough back to pursue any of the really exciting projects... pretty simple really.

Lithose_sl said:

That's interesting; but I thought those "random" particle creations disappeared almost instantly? How is it possible to ionize them and use them as fuel?

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It still seems crazy to me. Like if that's the explanation then we've opened up a new can of worms in the physics world.