I also dont get it. A Mach Effect thruster does not generate energy.
The way I understand it and always have, is that the ME thruster is comparable to a wheel that is powered by an engine and running over solid ground. Lets disregard the losses through friction here (which would normally cause a wheel running over ground to slow down, when you stop putting energy into it).
You put more energy into rotating the wheel and it will accelerate. You stop putting energy into the wheel and it will continue running at the curent speed.
I understand that an ME thruster works the same way. If you stop putting energy into the ME thruster, it will stop accelerating. You have to keep putting energy into it for it to produce thrust.
There is no perpetuum mobile and no free lunch.
The only difference between an ME thruster and a normal rocket engine is that it does not require to expell a reaction mass. Just like a wheel that is running over ground does not require to expell a reaction mass.
Mach Effect progress
So this could be a way to circumvent the end of the universe? No longer depend on fusion as an energy source for life. ME driven flywheels as touted could produce energy and thereby create matter endlessly via accelerators etc,93143 wrote: As for why I used a flywheel - basically it's because, given working Mach-effect technology at a good thrust efficiency, this setup is an eminently practical steady-state power generation scheme, and it is thus very easy to understand the energy balance. Linear acceleration can illustrate the point too, but it tends to cause people to confuse themselves...
If you treat such an ME flywheel as a black box then where is that energy coming from?
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GIThruster
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GeeGee, I've had some personal correspondence with Dr. Fuerst and it seems plain to me he has no interest in understanding M-E theory. He does not understand M-E theory whatsoever. For instance, when he writes:GeeGee wrote:I am actually the one who referred Dr. Fuerst to NSF (Paul gave him Woodward's e-mail). There was a thread on reddit about the M-E, and Dr. Fuerst claimed the M-E wouldn't work because the math was wrong. I admit I don't really understand his argument, but it sounds like a misunderstanding to me, as he seems to think the M-E requires a violation of the conservation of momentum to work. This was his latest criticism of the M-E:GIThruster wrote:The work by Dr. Cummins was years ago. Dr. Fuerst just recently joined Jim's reading list and isn't up to date on either Jim's theory nor the experimental work over the years.
"The issues with M-E propulsion have nothing to do with the theory of inertia! Any theory at all will do, so long as it couples to the gravitational mass/energy distribution.
The issue is one of engineering. You simply cannot construct a gravitational mass/energy distribution that will have a time-varying monopole or dipole moment. To do so requires you to be able to create negative gravitational mass/energy.
The current propulsion model tries to use a matter dipole... but it has a mistake where important terms are left out. Add those terms, and the purported dipole disappears.
Physically, the lowest multipole order that is possible is the quadrapole. This unfortunately lowers the magnitude of any effect enormously. The need for a varying quadrapole moment is a very well known result. Trying to ignore it doesn't do the M-E folks any favours."
"The issues with M-E propulsion have nothing to do with the theory of inertia" he is obviously wrong. It has everything to do with inertia. Jim's theory is completely contingent upon two things, Mach's Principle and GR. Without either one being correct, Jim's theory cannot be correct. If Dr. Fuerst had invested himself in 20 minutes reading of the papers sent him weeks ago by Paul March, he could not possibly make these kinds of mistakes. His writing to me is filled with this evidence of neglect and pretense, and clearly demonstrates he's in no way interested to understand the theory, despite he claims those in Woodward's group have been soliciting him to debunk Jim's theory.
In Dr. Fuerst's defense, it is certainly the case that most often, people with these high level skills in things like GR are hesitant to use them. There's just too much else to do. Years ago, I had a conflict with Jack Sarfatti, because although he claims to be paid by CIA to vet things like advanced propulsion theory, he has steadfastly refused to read Jim's papers for years, and yet would criticize him on his enormous reading lists. That's just crazy behavior. Like Dr. Fuerst, he'd make objections that demonstrate he has no knowledge of the theory, and what is the point of criticizing what you don't understand in the least? Makes no sense and is in fact, intellectually bankrupt behavior.
I certainly want nothing more to do with it, nor Dr. Fuerst.
You you tell me, why did you drag Dr. Fuerst first into NSF, and now come here posting? Who are you and what do you want? Why is your first post here at T-P with regard to someone else?
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
I didn't drag him to NSF. I simply asked him where the math was wrong, since Woodward's M-E hypothesis has been peer-reviewed for over a decade now and it seems unlikely such an "obvious" error would only be seen now. I then suggested he make an account at NSF so he could discuss this with people working on the M-E.GIThruster wrote: You you tell me, why did you drag Dr. Fuerst first into NSF, and now come here posting? Who are you and what do you want? Why is your first post here at T-P with regard to someone else?
As for who I am, I post at NSF regularly. I don't "want" anything. I'm simply replying to a post about Dr. Fuerst. I was just curious if his criticism had any merit. Why are you being so contentious?
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GIThruster
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Perhaps I am being overly contentious. If that's so you have my apology.
The thing that ruffles my feathers is that I wrote a private note to Fuerst offering he read the papers sent him a couple weeks ago, because the quality of his responses over at NSF clearly demonstrate he is not familiar with M-E theory, yet he is casting all manner of complaint against it. When someone else there accuses Jim of breaking EEP, he agrees without a moments thought to what is obviously not true. When he complains that Jim's work is not contingent upon any theory of gravity, he's giving himself license to ignore the role of Mach's Principle in the theory. Things like this demonstrate ignorance, and though its easy for those who understand the work to note these don't pertain nor obtain, this is not obvious to those casually reading a blog. It's all annoying to me, and it should be to you too.
When a PhD in GR has comments to make about a theory concerning GR, one wants to take those comments very seriously. When those comments demonstrate ignorance, they do harm. It is that harm, born of ignorance and laziness, to which I object.
The thing that ruffles my feathers is that I wrote a private note to Fuerst offering he read the papers sent him a couple weeks ago, because the quality of his responses over at NSF clearly demonstrate he is not familiar with M-E theory, yet he is casting all manner of complaint against it. When someone else there accuses Jim of breaking EEP, he agrees without a moments thought to what is obviously not true. When he complains that Jim's work is not contingent upon any theory of gravity, he's giving himself license to ignore the role of Mach's Principle in the theory. Things like this demonstrate ignorance, and though its easy for those who understand the work to note these don't pertain nor obtain, this is not obvious to those casually reading a blog. It's all annoying to me, and it should be to you too.
When a PhD in GR has comments to make about a theory concerning GR, one wants to take those comments very seriously. When those comments demonstrate ignorance, they do harm. It is that harm, born of ignorance and laziness, to which I object.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
All right, I'll try again.
Take a generator turning at a steady speed. It takes power from its driveshaft by resisting the rotation thereof. The power generated is the resistance torque multiplied by the rotational speed.
Now, what do you have to do to the driveshaft to maintain its speed against the generator's counter-torque? You have to apply an equal and opposite torque to it. In a coal-fired power plant, this is accomplished with a steam turbine.
...
Numbers first this time. Say you've got a 12-pole generator, efficiency 100% for the sake of argument. Your rotational speed is 600 rpm, or 62.8 rad/s. Your power out is 10 MW. Therefore the torque applied by the generator to the driveshaft is 159 kN·m, or 117,387 ft·lb. This torque must be countered by something in order to maintain the speed of the driveshaft and keep the system producing electrical power.
Say you've attached a flywheel to the driveshaft, with tangentially-oriented Mach-effect thrusters arranged uniformly around the edge so as to spin it without generating a bending moment on the driveshaft. As we've just established, these thrusters need to counter the torque induced by the generator, so they need to supply 159 kN·m in total. Let's say that the proponents are right, and that 1 N/W is feasible. So we'll give the thrusters a thrust efficiency of 1 N/W.
Let the radius of the flywheel be 1 m.
The required torque is then reached at a total thrust of 159 kN. At a thrust efficiency of 1 N/W, operation of the thrusters requires 159 kW in total.
Any questions?
...
You can indeed do the same thing with rocket engines - but you run into an interesting issue. You need to accelerate the propellant up to the speed of the engines before burning it and sending it back out. This eats up all your gains, and all you end up with is a somewhat silly-looking heat engine.
The "magic" of the M-E thruster that enables this to work, if my conjecture regarding its operating principle is correct, is that it uses distant matter as its reaction mass - and there's always plenty of that moving very slowly relative to the thruster (however that translates across non-Euclidean expanding space... more GR). Thus the thruster can push on it fairly hard without doing much work, because F·v is small. The key difference between a Mach-effect thruster and a rocket is and has always been that you don't have to worry about supplying the M-E thruster with propellant.
Take a generator turning at a steady speed. It takes power from its driveshaft by resisting the rotation thereof. The power generated is the resistance torque multiplied by the rotational speed.
Now, what do you have to do to the driveshaft to maintain its speed against the generator's counter-torque? You have to apply an equal and opposite torque to it. In a coal-fired power plant, this is accomplished with a steam turbine.
...
Numbers first this time. Say you've got a 12-pole generator, efficiency 100% for the sake of argument. Your rotational speed is 600 rpm, or 62.8 rad/s. Your power out is 10 MW. Therefore the torque applied by the generator to the driveshaft is 159 kN·m, or 117,387 ft·lb. This torque must be countered by something in order to maintain the speed of the driveshaft and keep the system producing electrical power.
Say you've attached a flywheel to the driveshaft, with tangentially-oriented Mach-effect thrusters arranged uniformly around the edge so as to spin it without generating a bending moment on the driveshaft. As we've just established, these thrusters need to counter the torque induced by the generator, so they need to supply 159 kN·m in total. Let's say that the proponents are right, and that 1 N/W is feasible. So we'll give the thrusters a thrust efficiency of 1 N/W.
Let the radius of the flywheel be 1 m.
The required torque is then reached at a total thrust of 159 kN. At a thrust efficiency of 1 N/W, operation of the thrusters requires 159 kW in total.
Any questions?
...
You can indeed do the same thing with rocket engines - but you run into an interesting issue. You need to accelerate the propellant up to the speed of the engines before burning it and sending it back out. This eats up all your gains, and all you end up with is a somewhat silly-looking heat engine.
The "magic" of the M-E thruster that enables this to work, if my conjecture regarding its operating principle is correct, is that it uses distant matter as its reaction mass - and there's always plenty of that moving very slowly relative to the thruster (however that translates across non-Euclidean expanding space... more GR). Thus the thruster can push on it fairly hard without doing much work, because F·v is small. The key difference between a Mach-effect thruster and a rocket is and has always been that you don't have to worry about supplying the M-E thruster with propellant.
I hardly understand the M-E hypothesis myself (much less the math), so I can't judge Dr. Fuerst. I do see your point, though. I thought Dr. Fuerst had read the papers when I saw his criticism on reddit, but as you point out, he is asserting things about the hypothesis that are clearly not in it, i.e. that the M-E requires a violation of momentum conservation, or that the origins of inertia is not central to how an MLT would work. As to his statement about the magnitude of the effect being tiny due to the quadropole term, I'll leave that one to Woodward and his tech list.GIThruster wrote:Perhaps I am being overly contentious. If that's so you have my apology.
The thing that ruffles my feathers is that I wrote a private note to Fuerst offering he read the papers sent him a couple weeks ago, because the quality of his responses over at NSF clearly demonstrate he is not familiar with M-E theory, yet he is casting all manner of complaint against it. When someone else there accuses Jim of breaking EEP, he agrees without a moments thought to what is obviously not true. When he complains that Jim's work is not contingent upon any theory of gravity, he's giving himself license to ignore the role of Mach's Principle in the theory. Things like this demonstrate ignorance, and though its easy for those who understand the work to note these don't pertain nor obtain, this is not obvious to those casually reading a blog. It's all annoying to me, and it should be to you too.
When a PhD in GR has comments to make about a theory concerning GR, one wants to take those comments very seriously. When those comments demonstrate ignorance, they do harm. It is that harm, born of ignorance and laziness, to which I object.
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GIThruster
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- Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm
[edit]
Last edited by GIThruster on Thu Jul 14, 2011 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
If you have a shaft with a torque applied at each end, then if you wish the rotational speed of the shaft (whatever it is) to remain unchanged, the torques have to be equal and opposite. That's not something you can call in General Relativity to challenge; it's just plain true.
My example does not deal with HOW the thrusters do what they do, nor does it need to. It only matters that they do it. They're black boxes. Once you've supplied them with power and gotten thrust out, it's all Newtonian all the way.
As long as you use an inertial reference frame, it doesn't matter what inertial reference frame you use or what the objects you're observing are doing; forces are forces. And at no point in my analysis did I use a non-inertial reference frame.
My example does not deal with HOW the thrusters do what they do, nor does it need to. It only matters that they do it. They're black boxes. Once you've supplied them with power and gotten thrust out, it's all Newtonian all the way.
As long as you use an inertial reference frame, it doesn't matter what inertial reference frame you use or what the objects you're observing are doing; forces are forces. And at no point in my analysis did I use a non-inertial reference frame.
Last edited by 93143 on Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
The way I see it is that you are arguing gain (Q).
If a ME device has Q < or = 1, then your input is less than or equals your output (flywheel, battery, pot of hot water, or driving the ME device), however you choose to store or use the energy. Once you have Q>1, then you can harvest the (excess) power to drive something other than the ME device.
That to me means that in order to have excess juice, beyond a unity Self Driving ME device (assuming 100% efficient), it means that the gain is >1 and that you are sucking more juice from the distant matter. And, in turn if you put in more juice, you get an amplified return on investment. Fair enough, but it is not free, it is just harvested from distant matter, and with more load to feed, would require more drive juice to run the amplifier. The ME device is an amplifier than operates at some gain level. If gain is less than 1, you need to augment it to get it to run. If gain is 1, then it (with magical 100% efficiency) will run itself, and itself only. With gain greater than 1, it can then run itself and Q-1 worth of other stuff. If you choose to store that excess, then so be it. But it matters not flywheel or teapot.
If you use more than the Q-1 excess in load, then you had better up the input or your light will go out (so to speak).
I understand you point in that you do not need GR to talk your issue, but I see no need to talk of flywheels. It is a simple matter of a black box amplifier and its loading.
If ME works, then the black box could run at some gain greater than 1, and that power is usable. That is the entire point. But it is not free, it is concentrated from elsewhere, just as any other amplifier would. That is the point of an amplifier.
If a ME device has Q < or = 1, then your input is less than or equals your output (flywheel, battery, pot of hot water, or driving the ME device), however you choose to store or use the energy. Once you have Q>1, then you can harvest the (excess) power to drive something other than the ME device.
That to me means that in order to have excess juice, beyond a unity Self Driving ME device (assuming 100% efficient), it means that the gain is >1 and that you are sucking more juice from the distant matter. And, in turn if you put in more juice, you get an amplified return on investment. Fair enough, but it is not free, it is just harvested from distant matter, and with more load to feed, would require more drive juice to run the amplifier. The ME device is an amplifier than operates at some gain level. If gain is less than 1, you need to augment it to get it to run. If gain is 1, then it (with magical 100% efficiency) will run itself, and itself only. With gain greater than 1, it can then run itself and Q-1 worth of other stuff. If you choose to store that excess, then so be it. But it matters not flywheel or teapot.
If you use more than the Q-1 excess in load, then you had better up the input or your light will go out (so to speak).
I understand you point in that you do not need GR to talk your issue, but I see no need to talk of flywheels. It is a simple matter of a black box amplifier and its loading.
If ME works, then the black box could run at some gain greater than 1, and that power is usable. That is the entire point. But it is not free, it is concentrated from elsewhere, just as any other amplifier would. That is the point of an amplifier.
But the black box in this case doesn't generate power. It generates thrust.ladajo wrote:I see no need to talk of flywheels. It is a simple matter of a black box amplifier and its loading.
In order to get power, you have to figure out a way to convert thrust into useful power - ie: a way to get the thruster to do steady-state controlled work. Hence the flywheel.
Exactly.But it is not free, it is concentrated from elsewhere, just as any other amplifier would. That is the point of an amplifier.
Correct, the elsewhere being the rest of the local universe that will cool down a little bit to allow you to use that energy.ladajo wrote:If ME works, then the black box could run at some gain greater than 1, and that power is usable. That is the entire point. But it is not free, it is concentrated from elsewhere, just as any other amplifier would. That is the point of an amplifier.
And this, IMHO, is still the biggest limit I see in accepting this conjecture.
I still dont get it. If you apply a counter- force to your ME- thruster without putting the same amount of energy into it, it will just slow down and ultimately stop. It uses the reast of the universe of a reaction mass, yes, but so does a wheel of a car with earth (if you want it that way).
If you put a horizontal wheel here on earth and then used a car to rotate the wheel and produce energy, you too have to keep pushing the gas pedal on the car, or the car will stop. I would assume that that same would be true for the ME- thruster and a flywheel in space.
If you put a horizontal wheel here on earth and then used a car to rotate the wheel and produce energy, you too have to keep pushing the gas pedal on the car, or the car will stop. I would assume that that same would be true for the ME- thruster and a flywheel in space.
Yes, the point here is exactly that, the extra energy to keep the wheel rolling is coming out from the engine.Skipjack wrote:I still dont get it. If you apply a counter- force to your ME- thruster without putting the same amount of energy into it, it will just slow down and ultimately stop. It uses the reast of the universe of a reaction mass, yes, but so does a wheel of a car with earth (if you want it that way).
If you put a horizontal wheel here on earth and then used a car to rotate the wheel and produce energy, you too have to keep pushing the gas pedal on the car, or the car will stop. I would assume that that same would be true for the ME- thruster and a flywheel in space.
The issue here is that the engine is giving you more energy out than you place in.
As example, suppose you have a Q=10, than you can use up to 9 units of this extra energy to overcome the counter-force, while feed back one unit to the engine to get back 10 more and repeat the cycle.
You do not need a flywheel to convert thrust to power. Consider for example arranging several ME devices that are turned on and off to cycle attached pistons, then in turn rolls a generator. In effect a V-8 ME Device.93143 wrote:But the black box in this case doesn't generate power. It generates thrust.ladajo wrote:I see no need to talk of flywheels. It is a simple matter of a black box amplifier and its loading.
In order to get power, you have to figure out a way to convert thrust into useful power - ie: a way to get the thruster to do steady-state controlled work. Hence the flywheel.
Exactly.But it is not free, it is concentrated from elsewhere, just as any other amplifier would. That is the point of an amplifier.
Although I am sure Rolls Royce would come up with a V-16 version...ou could also use this piston style device to pump fluids, compress gasses, etc, etc...
Once you have motion (thrust) the power extraction methods are many. I am thinking that you did not mean to limit the discussion to flywheels. My point is only that an ME Device is an Amp. It controls the flow of energy from elsewhere to a useful focal point.
Giorgio,
Think back to the sail analogy. How does a sail actually work. There are many arguments over the fundamental principle regarding hte operation of an airfoil. But it to is an amplifier. IMO it focuses the moving mass energy of the air to a focal point on the wind pocket side, while on the opposite side it disperses the moving air mass from the focal point. This creates an inertial imbalance, that products thrust from the high energy area to the low energy area. In effect the inertial component of the wind pocket side converges (and "amplifies" or "concentrates" the inertial component of the air), while the inertial component of the opposite side diverges, or possibly converges to a lessor degree (and disperses or concentrates the inertial component to a lessor degree.) We do not normally set a frame of reference when considering the energy/mass/inertial components when thinking of a sail and how it works, but is it not a similar argument to the boundaries of a ME Device and its system? One could argue say that without the sun, sailing would not be possible, and therefore the sun must be in the boundary of the system...all that energy has to come from somewhere...
Thoughts?