Mach Effect progress

[paulmarch]

Paul, at NextBigFuture, GoatGuy said ME was a perpetual motion machine. I replied by giving the example of a sail.

This was his reply

Not at all Rogerio. A sail redirects a mass of air, giving a resultant force, and deriving that force by the displacement of the vector-of-velocity of the air thus displaced. A device (and note I didn't say M.E. device), any device for that matter, that has no resultant “equal and opposite force”, for a fixed amount of input power, becomes a perpetual motion device when W = F·D (or DW = F·DD) exceeds the input power to the system. I'm sorry, but this isn't a personal “belief” issue, but hard physics. It would be real, measurable, and a violation of the conservation of both energy and momentum.

BTW — I'm also not “resting my case” on this, but rather observing what is a logical error.

I also recall that you (or some very similar) forwarded the “wind sail” argument as a silver bullet supposedly through the heart of my argument. Unfortunately, while it is trivially easy to say, “Goat, you're full of shyte”, it is much harder to take the constraint system I've laid out, and show, numerically, why it doesn't become a violation of the underlying laws of Physics.

But please — go for it. I'm plenty ready to see NUMBERS and some derivations. I really am.

to THIS reply I posted as a quote your above post about ME not being a Perpetual Motion Machine. If however you feel like arguing with GoatGuy, and providing him with the numbers and derivations he wants, here is the link
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/scalin ... qus_thread

AcesHigh:

If GoatGuy has problems with the M-E derivation, he should address those perceived problems directly and show where they are at fault in a rebuttal paper in the peer reviewed journal that published Woodward's M-E paper. The M-E derivation is contained in Woodward's "Flux Capacitors and the Origins of Inertia" paper as published in the Foundations of Physics Journal.

See:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m442n70106j14012/

In the meantime the Woodward test team continues to develop and execute the experimental test program that is fleshing out the M-E conjecture.

Best,

[Betruger]

For hyperlinks to precise disqus posts, you must grab the URL off the "time stamp" of a given post. It'll look like this:

Code: Select all

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/scaling-up-mach-effect-propulsion.html#comment-218908529

For forum quotes here you have to put the custom name in quotation marks, to avoid breaking the quote function. e.g.

To be or not to be

no quote marks around Hamlet

Shoo bee doo bee doo

with quote marks

[TallDave]

Yeah, I see a lot of confusion over whether this is a perpetual motion or "free energy" device. I've explained that it isn't on a couple boards, but confusion seems to be the general rule.

I stand corrected.

Woodward will consider the offers here of some small support in order to press the work forward in the Fall. Between now and then, he'll be doing some serious modeling and until the Fall, won't know just what new apparatus he'll be needing.

So, if the offers of some small support here are genuine, I'll have some news for you about this in a few months. In the meantime, my suggestion is try to get current as possible on the work so you understand the decisions being made.

Thanks, keep us posted.

Hopefully the whole thing doesn't turn out to be experimental error

[Betruger]

GoatGuy at NBF mentions that micro Newtons are enough for the needs of space probe gyros, and that the market's a rich one. How feasible is this for you guys, Woodward and March etc?

[GIThruster]

If one posits that the earliest prototypes will be very low thrust, very low thrust efficiency devices like what we've seen operate in the lab, then the first market for M-E thrusters of any sort will be in things like satellite station keeping. We'd need to know we have the thrust die-off issue from years ago mastered for such a commercial device, but for instance, such a thruster could save NASA billions over the course of the next decade just by making the ISS reboost propellants unnecessary. An even larger market exists when you consider the applications to commercial satellites, the lifetime of which is often set by the volume of propellant that can be practically included. Working propellantless thrusters would alter the way satellites are designed and constructed, as well as their mission descriptions, and those sent to very high orbits could be launched to low ones very cheaply, and lofted the rest of the way with their stationkeeping thrusters--something propellant driven thrusters could never do.

That's just the very first, low thrust, low efficiency iterations. As you increase these two you have new options open. At some point you can build flying cars and the host of levitating and flying machines common to science fiction. At that point you've also enabled human spaceflight and a "one-gee solution" where your craft continuously accelerate at 1 Earth gee. (This is an issue the guys over at NBF never understood, continue to argue and are wrong. Constant thrust does indeed generate constant acceleration to a rocket. The solution to this is extremely complex and the proper solution needs GR.)

At some high efficiency beyond this above, these thrusters should be able to generate enough thrust that when strapped to a flywheel, net electrical energy emerges. This is the simplest example of what seems a conservation violation. The point to remember here is that M-E devices are not transducers, converting electrical into kinetic energy. They are transistors, controlling the flow of gravinertial flux, which is what gives matter its inertial mass. It's easy to see how such ability seems to lead to a perpetual motion machine.

Say you can at will, simply alter the mass of matter. You can put it on a flywheel, and make the mass weigh less on one side than it does on the other, so the wheel turns. The mass is light as it moves up, and heavy as it moves down. This would be a violation of conservation except that you're here using a new ability--generating Mach Effects.

When all the examples are said and done with, the simplest observation is, that it is this ability to alter the inertial mass of objects that is at the core of all conservation violation arguments. Once you grant Mach's Principle, that Matter gets its mass from gravity, and you grant Woodward's derivation results--that matter's mass can be temporarily fluctuated, you have a whole new set of rules to cope with. You can't make the simplistic perpetual motion machine arguments that served for high school physics, because that physics presumes the mass of matter doesn't change.

[KitemanSA]

For LEO purposes, ME is like using a F35 to go to the corner store. Electro-dynamic tethers work just fine, thanks. GEO? Maybe. Deep space? Well now we're talking!

[Betruger]

What I was getting at is more that right now overkill like an "F35" M-E device is better than nothing. Right now there's nothing.

GoatGuy asserts that micro-Newton thrust should be enough for auto-motive demos on frictionless platform.

[ladajo]

If one posits that the earliest prototypes will be very low thrust, very low thrust efficiency devices like what we've seen operate in the lab, then the first market for M-E thrusters of any sort will be in things like satellite station keeping. We'd need to know we have the thrust die-off issue from years ago mastered for such a commercial device, but for instance, such a thruster could save NASA billions over the course of the next decade just by making the ISS reboost propellants unnecessary. An even larger market exists when you consider the applications to commercial satellites, the lifetime of which is often set by the volume of propellant that can be practically included. Working propellantless thrusters would alter the way satellites are designed and constructed, as well as their mission descriptions, and those sent to very high orbits could be launched to low ones very cheaply, and lofted the rest of the way with their stationkeeping thrusters--something propellant driven thrusters could never do.

That's just the very first, low thrust, low efficiency iterations. As you increase these two you have new options open. At some point you can build flying cars and the host of levitating and flying machines common to science fiction. At that point you've also enabled human spaceflight and a "one-gee solution" where your craft continuously accelerate at 1 Earth gee. (This is an issue the guys over at NBF never understood, continue to argue and are wrong. Constant thrust does indeed generate constant acceleration to a rocket. The solution to this is extremely complex and the proper solution needs GR.)

At some high efficiency beyond this above, these thrusters should be able to generate enough thrust that when strapped to a flywheel, net electrical energy emerges. This is the simplest example of what seems a conservation violation. The point to remember here is that M-E devices are not transducers, converting electrical into kinetic energy. They are transistors, controlling the flow of gravinertial flux, which is what gives matter its inertial mass. It's easy to see how such ability seems to lead to a perpetual motion machine.

Say you can at will, simply alter the mass of matter. You can put it on a flywheel, and make the mass weigh less on one side than it does on the other, so the wheel turns. The mass is light as it moves up, and heavy as it moves down. This would be a violation of conservation except that you're here using a new ability--generating Mach Effects.

When all the examples are said and done with, the simplest observation is, that it is this ability to alter the inertial mass of objects that is at the core of all conservation violation arguments. Once you grant Mach's Principle, that Matter gets its mass from gravity, and you grant Woodward's derivation results--that matter's mass can be temporarily fluctuated, you have a whole new set of rules to cope with. You can't make the simplistic perpetual motion machine arguments that served for high school physics, because that physics presumes the mass of matter doesn't change.

Interesting point in that most long orbit devices burn out of fuel in debris avoidance. Of course the flip side is that longer lifetimes, means less on orbit innovation for devices.

[GIThruster]

Well, going to LEO is really harder than moving from LEO to GEO. Launch requires a thrust to mass greater than one.

GoatGuy is correct that micro-Newtons are enough to demo on things like an air table. Trouble is, you have to have a self contained unit that is light enough to float on such a table, and miniaturizing power components is a TRL-7 activity. It's beyond our joint resources to do such a thing. I will note however that Paul March is headed in this direction. His self-contained power system is not using IC's so far as I know (don't quote me--I haven't talked with Paul about this for a while) and intended for pendulum deflection tests rather than an air bed, but Paul has wanted to use an air bed test for years. I'm sure he'll get there ASAP.

Testing on an air bed is arguably a TRL-6 activity. For a real TRL 7 test, one would want to build a small robot with a handful of thrusters and fly it around the cabin at ISS. You could do that with micro-Newtons as well, but I think it will be quite some time before we get such space on a Dragon capsule. I wouldn't put it out of the question happening in 3 years if we saw some breakthrough funding. Would take an accomplished PhD EE just a few months to design and build the power system if he had pay, but these guys make $250k/year and you DO have to pay them. Likewise, I'd think such a demo would be more compelling if we were looking at milli-Newtons. If we see that, odds are funding for the prototypes will not be far behind.

It might sound odd, but another of the first applications for low thrust to weight and low thrust efficiency devices would be a flying R2D2 for ISS. I'd bet there'd be a flock of NASA engineers fighting over who gets to design such a thing.

[GIThruster]

Of course the flip side is that longer lifetimes, means less on orbit innovation for devices.

True. We'd have to look forward to driving innovation in other ways, like interplanetary probes.

[Betruger]

GoatGuy is correct that micro-Newtons are enough to demo on things like an air table. Trouble is, you have to have a self contained unit that is light enough to float on such a table

What he suggests:

one of the easiest ways is to suspend a self-powered apparatus from a magnetic bearing in a large bell-jar to mitigate against thermal and convection air currents. (This is not a torsion balance, though they're good too.). Bring it “to rest” (this is what powerful neodymium magnets and copper plates excel at, by way of eddy-current losses). Remove the eddy-plate. Turn on. Watch to see how fast it accelerates to spin up.

Alternately, use a “torsion servo” (analogous to a Whetstone bridge, but for masses) to overcome any real-world friction from mechanical bearings to a few parts per billion. Again, pretty inexpensive, and definitely reliable. Real continuous accelerations would be relatively easy to measure then.

[GIThruster]

How does he suggest you remove the eddy plate from the evacuated bell jar?

[Betruger]

You'll have to ask him yourself

[rjaypeters]

...but Woodward would not accept any funding. He has steadfastly refused such help...

Though I respect integrity, perhaps it would be acceptable to begin a KickStarter project on his behalf?

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/cat ... ref=footer

[AcesHigh]

You'll have to ask him yourself

I wish Gi or Paul would just go there at NBF to discuss Mach Effect with the people there. I am not really a good mail pigeon