Mach Effect progress

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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Skipjack
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Skipjack »

Once they start doing orbital test launches with Starship, there will probably be plenty of room to have small payloads like these launched for cheap, or even free...

Giorgio
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Giorgio »

Carl White wrote:
Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:44 pm
What would a cost comparison look like between, say, the time and resources Martin Tajmar and his lab spent on testing, and simply building a cube sat that could definitively demonstrate whether on not the effect works by virtue of being out in space. Maybe beg a place on one of Elon Musk's Starlink launches.
From the article it seems that a practical test is still not possible as the effect is appearing and disappearing because the "resonant frequency constantly shifts as the device heats up. It also varies with the experimental setup."
Once they can get a time stable signal in the lab (regardless of the origin) they can probably start to consider a practical test to check it's real nature.

It would have been nice if they actually supplied some more data in the article, at least to understand how much time the effect appears before disappearing.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

Skipjack
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Skipjack »

The "resonant frequency" thing is what I find really off putting.

Carl White
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Carl White »

I guess they could just cycle the frequency in a range. It wouldn't be very efficient, but they would get bursts of acceleration over time as the frequency repeatedly passes through the resonant frequency of the moment.

Skipjack
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Skipjack »

It could mean a lot if things.
E.g. it could mean that the thing is just jerking back and forth.
It could also mean that you need to increase power as you accelerate.

Giorgio
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Giorgio »

Right now they could make good use of Tajmar help if they kept contact and good relationships with him.
He is quite excellent in pinpointing external or internal causes of interference on data logs while keeping enough open mind to evaluate the experimental results in an objective way.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

williatw
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by williatw »

Anybody heard anything about results of DARPA's supposed EmDrive test mentioned in Popular Mechanics back in Nov '18 ?

Giorgio
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Giorgio »

If i remember correctly DARPA's results was also negative/inconclusive, but I might be confusing them with some other lab.
EMdrive has been tested from half a dozen labs so far in Europe China and USA and all of them didn't find the claimed effect or pinpointed any anomaly to a known physical process.
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williatw
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by williatw »

Giorgio wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 7:41 am
If i remember correctly DARPA's results was also negative/inconclusive, but I might be confusing them with some other lab.
EMdrive has been tested from half a dozen labs so far in Europe China and USA and all of them didn't find the claimed effect or pinpointed any anomaly to a known physical process.
Doesn't seem to mention the DARPA test at all but what is your opinion about this:


The interesting part starts on pg 15: Mach Effect Thrusters (MET)

Immediately followed by:

EmDrive on pg 16. Doesn't look like my posted links consistently take you to the right pages in the report in spite of my efforts, apologies.


Movement and Maneuver in Deep Space A Framework to Leverage Advanced Propulsion Brian E. Hans, Major, USAF Christopher D. Jefferson, Major, USAF Joshua M. Wehrle, Major, USAF



https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/23/2 ... ULSION.PDF

Far as I can tell it doesn't say one word about UFO's (promise); know that "disappoints" you. Seems like there has been more official interest in both "fringe" technologies than is being generally let on. Since we are rapidly approaching an era where thanks to Elon Musk's reusable rockets in-space testing of cheap microsats is on the horizon, we may finally get an answer to rather both of these has any merits. The simplest test would be to launch a Mach Thruster (or EmDrive) type micro-sats into orbit switch them on and let's see what happens. Who knows, some might work some might not work; subtle differences in configuration might produce different results. Maybe the effect itself if real is intermittent; who can say.

pbelter
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by pbelter »

This document was written in 2017 so it is pretty old.
The person mentioned as someone doing a retest is Travis Taylor.
Aside form begin a scientist is a pretty good SF writer and interested in the UFO phenomenon, that got Woodward thinking about Mach Effect.
Here is a recent video of Travis Taylor discussing UFO

https://www.thealiencon.com/videos/alie ... isclosure/

I wonder if he was really involved in replicating the phenomenon.

williatw
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by williatw »

pbelter wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:24 pm
This document was written in 2017 so it is pretty old.
From my posted link:


Accepted by Air University Press April 2017 and published May 2019


Yes looks like your right; only the published date is relatively new. It did make a reference elsewhere in the document about DARPA being "still on the fence", that should have been a clue. The Popular Mechanics article was dated Nov'18 indicating that they had a million to do their study of the EmDrive. Still no info I can find on how it went.

Giorgio
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Giorgio »

williatw wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 7:19 pm
Doesn't seem to mention the DARPA test at all but what is your opinion about this:
Movement and Maneuver in Deep Space A Framework to Leverage Advanced Propulsion Brian E. Hans, Major, USAF Christopher D. Jefferson, Major, USAF Joshua M. Wehrle, Major, USAF
The whole section on Woodward from that article was extrapolated from the "2016 Breakthrough Propulsion Workshop Proceedings" that was indicted by Lance Williams, Heidi Fearn (both strong Woodward believers), and Jim Woodward itself.
It was more a meeting of friends to celebrate someone they respect, and I am perfectly fine with that, but it didn't bring any new info on the experimental side nor the theoretical framework of the Mach effect.
Also Tajmar participated in that meeting and gave a short speech about the actual (2016) situation of experimental set-ups to help research in validating reaction-less technologies, and you can see from that speech how much the guy really loves his investigation process.
But the real main issue I have with all these propellant-less technologies is that they generally seem to start with claims of effects in the order of magnitude of Newtons/kw, but as labs start to dig into them and optimize the experimental set-up the effect drops to mNewtons/Kw or even uNewtons/Kw. Not a good sign.

I am totally for scientific research and experimental trials because even a negative result is a result that increase our general knowledge, but in the last few years I start to get the feeling that we have reached a point where scientific research on Earth does not seem to be able anymore to grasp additional "meaningful" knowledge that can help us make a new technological leap.
In my humble opinion until we will finally understand how gravity (and Inertia) emerge within our three-dimensional reference frame we will hardly make any serious scientific or technological advancement that will help us escape or even seriously colonize our small inner solar system .

Right now I also look forward to the possibility that a cheap access in space can bring to establishing research center out of our gravity well, in the hope that it could give us a new opportunity in understanding the nature of gravity and the reality of the universe we live in.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

Giorgio
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Giorgio »

For the one interested here is the link to the full 337 pages PDF of the "2016 Breakthrough Propulsion Workshop Proceedings".
Proceedings of 2016 Estes Park Advanced Propulsion Workshop
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williatw
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by williatw »

The EmDrive Just Won't Die

More than 20 years after its introduction, the EmDrive is still being tested in labs around the world, including DARRA. But the controversial thruster's do-or-die moment is quickly approaching.
By David Hambling
Sep 11, 2020


Image
When DARPA put money behind the controversial EmDrive in 2018, it looked like a big gamble. Many physicists had dismissed the revolutionary space drive as simply fake science. Now its EmDrive project is greenlit for Phase 2, DARPA told Popular Mechanics in February this year. Meanwhile, other teams are hoping to reach a final demonstration of the technology later this year.

"This is a technology which could transform space travel and see craft lifting silently off from launchpads and reaching beyond the solar system," says Mike McCulloch, a lecturer in geomatics at the University of Plymouth, U.K., and leader behind DARPA’s EmDrive project. “We can also get an unmanned probe to Proxima Centauri in a (long) human lifetime, 90 years.”

But DARPA is tempering that idealistic vision. have led to new thruster designs, and these new designs may help inform future development and testing activities,” a DARPA spokesman told Popular Mechanics.

With two ongoing studies rigorously testing the EmDrive’s “impossibility,” the controversial drive that’s hung around astro-engineering circles for more than two decades is only months away from its do-or-die moment.

Image
NASA Eagleworks team testing the EmDrive in 2016.

The original EmDrive, built by Roger Shawyer in 1998, is a sealed copper tube (pictured above) wider at one end than the other. According to Shawyer, if you bounce microwaves around inside the tube, they exert more force in one direction than the other, creating a net thrust without the need for any propellant.

According to conventional physics, this shouldn’t happen. Put simply, closed systems like the proposed EmDrive should not generate thrust. But several research groups, including NASA’s Eagleworks (formally known as the Advanced Physics Propulsion Laboratory, set up to explore new technologies) and a team at Xi’an in China, tried it and got the same result, a small-but-distinct net force.

Critics believe that the experimental results must be wrong while McCulloch believes we just don't understand the physics yet.

"Many enthusiastic individuals want to believe it is a method that can be used to escape the constraints of known physical principles on space propulsion systems."

McCulloch has developed a theory of Quantized Inertia (QI), which explains the effect and how it could help with human space travel. McCulloch has spent much of the past 18 months honing this theory and checking how its predictions match results in the laboratory.

Jose Luis Perez Diaz in Madrid, Spain, and Martin Tajmar in Dresden, Germany, are carrying out the experimental side of the project. Tajmar confirms that he plans to publish two papers in February 2021, one on the “normal” microwave EmDrives and the other on the laser-based EmDrives. On the experimental side, Tajmar is still working on eliminating every possible source of error.

“We are still improving our balances and testing continues, “ says Tajmar. “In particular we are working on further reduction of magnetic field interactions with the environment, which was the major side-effect that we discovered in previous testing.”

When asked whether he might have an alternative explanation for the apparent thrust seen in previous tests, Tajmar only says to “Wait for the papers…”

Tales From the Loop

One of McCulloch’s predictions is that thrust can be achieved with light as well as microwaves. Diaz has carried out experiments in Madrid testing this hypothesis by using an asymmetric loop of optical fiber wound 2,000 times, which he calls a Photon Loop.

As with the microwave version, the asymmetry is what matters. A racing car experiences different forces depending on how sharp a bend it goes around, and according to QI, a similar effect occurs with light going around bends of different curvature. Diaz found that passing laser pulses through the Photon Loop produces enough net force to move it.

After Diaz constructed and tested this apparatus, he sent it to Tajmar’s laboratory in Dresden for verification and precise measurement of the thrust, which is being carried out this summer. McCulloch says that the thrust appears to be between one and four micronewtons—exactly the amount his theory predicts.
photon loop
ImageExample of the Photon Loop.Jose Luis Perez Diaz

The advantage of this apparatus is that fiber optics are much cheaper and easier to set up and test than copper cavities requiring precise machining. Once the design is perfected, it should be possible for physics labs around the world to make their own Photon Loops and see the effect for themselves.

The big challenge is accurately measuring such a low level of thrust as an experimental error can skew results dramatically. McCulloch believes this can be resolved in the next phase. By feeding the thrust equations into optimization software, McCulloch has designed a drive thousands of times more efficient than Shawyer’s original. This design has a series of spikes at one end—McCulloch says they nicknamed it the Bart Drive after Bart Simpson’s spiky hair.

The current design is calculated to provide a thrust of about .012 Newtons (equal to the weight of a paperclip, or a raisin) for one kilowatt of power, similar to the drives used to maneuver satellites. But McCulloch believes they can do several times better at least, and that the experiments will prove this.

“The Bart Drive should provide 0.012 N/kW, comparable to industry ion drives already but without propellant, which makes them heavy, and with a limited lifespan,” says McCulloch. “If we can provide 0.1 N/kW [about 8 times more than existing drives] without needing propellant then the satellite companies will be very interested, and my hope is that this is the threshold that will make the technology take off.”

A Physics Violation

A working EmDrive which produces more thrust and existing space drives would be revolutionary, but McCullouch’s QI theory is not accepted physics—not even close.

The sticking point is the law of conservation of momentum, which says that inside a closed system momentum remains constant. This is why you cannot haul yourself into the air by pulling on your booststaps. This result has remained solid for the past century and is accepted by a vast majority of scientists.

This is why most critics don't take the EmDrive seriously, and some mock it with comments about ‘magic space unicorns’ providing thrust, or ‘EmDrive, more like BS Drive.’ The weight of science is on their side, and it will take something pretty dramatic to displace it.


Brice Cassenti, an expert in advanced propulsion systems at the University of Connecticut, goes with the general view that the EmDrive does not seem plausible because it violates the law of conservation of momentum.

“Only the electromagnetic waves emitted by the conical antenna can provide a momentum change, that can provide a force, and the force is several orders of magnitude too small,” Cassenti told Popular Mechanics. He believes the EmDrive’s enduring popularity with DARPA is because of the promise it offers.

“Many enthusiastic individuals want to believe it is a method that can be used to escape the constraints of known physical principles on space propulsion systems and open up humanity to voyages to the stars,” says Cassenti.

Cassenti believes it is important to explore new and challenging concepts, but given the infinite variety on offer, he prefers those with the backing of known physics. “In my opinion, it will always be better to invest engineering efforts in existing avenues that satisfy known physical principles and gradually build up science in new avenues for engineers to explore,” says Cassenti.
Everyone Can Play

Whether real or not, DARPA isn’t the only one working on this technology.

McCulloch is also talking to a consortium in California who are creating their own Horizon Drive experiment. This group includes the University of Southern California and an organization, which he is only allowed to describe as a ‘major aerospace company.’ Their goal is to demonstrate the effect “viscerally” so that, unlike micro-thrust demonstration, anyone who sees it will believe. McCulloch says that results should be released this month.

Even the U.S. Navy has been dabbling in this area. One of their researchers, Salvatore Cesar Pais, recently took out a patent for a space drive with a conical resonant cavity and microwave emitters remarkably similar to the EmDrive. The Navy declined to discuss this work.

There are other players, too. Chinese researchers from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an were the earliest to take an interest in Shawyer’s work in the early 2000s, publishing a number of scientific papers outlining their apparently rapid progress. There was a flurry of media indicating they were preparing to test their drive in space in 2016, but everything has been silent since.

The current phase of the DARPA project will continue until May 2021, and it’s possible that the project will fizzle out unless there are tangible results. After two decades, the final verdict on the EmDrive is quickly approaching.
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https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/ ... -wont-die/

Carl White
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Re: Mach Effect progress

Post by Carl White »

McCulloch is also talking to a consortium in California who are creating their own Horizon Drive experiment. This group includes the University of Southern California and an organization, which he is only allowed to describe as a ‘major aerospace company.’ Their goal is to demonstrate the effect “viscerally” so that, unlike micro-thrust demonstration, anyone who sees it will believe. McCulloch says that results should be released this month.
So a test in space, or maybe aboard a vomit comet? I wonder whether we'll hear anything. Sounds too good to be true.

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