NASA Tests 'Impossible' Space Drive

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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NASA scientists have conducted tests on a new form of space propulsion called the Cannae Drive. It is radically different from any other yet devised form of propulsion as it uses no standard form of fuel and has the potential of shortening trips to Mars from months to just weeks.

While the amount of thrust generated in these NASA's tests was lower than previous trials — between 30 and 50 micronewtons, way less than even the weight of an iPhone, as Nova points out — the fact that any thrust whatsoever is generated without an onboard source of fuel seems to violate the conservation of momentum, a bedrock in the laws of physics.
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I thought we made fun of the Chinese when they announced something similar (?)
 
Uvaman said:
I thought we made fun of the Chinese when they announced something similar (?)
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Made fun of a scientist. Who then took it to the Chinese because they were the only ones willing to build and test his theory, supposedly.
 
I guess NASA's philosophy is 'better late than never' to the party as long as you show up. I don't think they are making fun of the scientist who discovered the process any longer, no matter what his educational pedigree is.
 
While I applaud scientists for trying to reach the stars with new forms of propulsion, unless we make a breakthrough in something exponentially faster, we are never going to go anywhere.
 
temujin987 said:
hooray, we may visit uranus within the next decades :D
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LMAO....they got 50 micro-Newtons of thrust. Not even enough to lift an iPhone. And you're thinking about how long it would take to reach Uranus with it? As of present-never.
 
Skripka said:
LMAO....they got 50 micro-Newtons of thrust. Not even enough to lift an iPhone. And you're thinking about how long it would take to reach Uranus with it? As of present-never.
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Once the vehicle is in space, then there's allot of potential use for this form of propulsion I think, where there's little friction to get in the way and gravity is not keeping it tied to the planet.

I imagine liftoff will be accomplished by more traditional means until that point.
 
I can understand NASA's initial reluctance to test this; it reeks of the usual perpetual motion scams. If there's one thing you learn in science, it's that there's never a free lunch. The hidden cost of this propulsion (and let there be no doubt that there is a hidden cost) should become more clear once they attempt to scale it up to a useful amount of thrust.
 
This reminds me of a short story (written in the 50's I think) where the main character encounters a strange old man who sells him a toy rocket that can supposedly fly on it's own, without any fuel, using an anti-gravity device built into the rocket

After paying money to buy the rocket, he discovers that it's really just a magic trick using a thin wire.

However, when he turns off the anti-gravity device and tries tries to "fly" the rocket using the wire alone, the wire breaks every time. He is left wondering whether the anti-gravity device really DOES work, but is just too weak to lift the rocket on it's own.
 
Wierdo said:
Once the vehicle is in space, then there's allot of potential use for this form of propulsion I think, where there's little friction to get in the way and gravity is not keeping it tied to the planet.

I imagine liftoff will be accomplished by more traditional means until that point.
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5 newtons (from a solar sail) is considered low-thrust propulsion.
 
The method of propulsion (if it actually does work...I'm skeptical), while novel, still needs a power source to produce the necessary EM radiation.
 
Skripka said:
LMAO....they got 50 micro-Newtons of thrust. Not even enough to lift an iPhone. And you're thinking about how long it would take to reach Uranus with it? As of present-never.
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50 micronewtons of thrust is enough for uranus :)
 
the fact that any thrust whatsoever is generated without an onboard source of fuel seems to violate the conservation of momentum, a bedrock in the laws of physics.
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Somebody's making progress I see.
 
BladeVenom said:
Alpha Centauri here we come.
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picard_clapping.gif
 
Laws of physics aren't 100% solid. C being a constant is directly set to specific conditions which have been shown to have been broken before. So conservation of energy may be no different. But again as someone else stated " NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH!"
 
viscountalpha said:
Laws of physics aren't 100% solid. C being a constant is directly set to specific conditions which have been shown to have been broken before. So conservation of energy may be no different. But again as someone else stated " NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH!"
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Yea...there's clearly no violation of the conservation of energy here. You're generating microwaves and using them to generate thrust. Microwaves don't just magically occur, and they openly admit how they did it.

The source article talking about "seeming to violate the conservation of momentum"...clearly needs to go back to high school physics.

TANSTAAFL.
 
Skripka said:
Yea...there's clearly no violation of the conservation of energy here. You're generating microwaves and using them to generate thrust. Microwaves don't just magically occur, and they openly admit how they did it.

The source article talking about "seeming to violate the conservation of momentum"...clearly needs to go back to high school physics.

TANSTAAFL.
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Except energy isn't interchangeable with momentum.
The issue at hand here is precisely how energy can be converted into momentum without any expendable mass to accelerate (fuel). I remain highly skeptical.
 
Kueller said:
Except energy isn't interchangeable with momentum.
The issue at hand here is precisely how energy can be converted into momentum without any expendable mass to accelerate (fuel). I remain highly skeptical.
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Exactly. It is an interesting result, but despite what some people seem to think in this thread, sometimes there can be free lunches in the weird spaces between well understood physics models...

Anyway... FULL IMPULSE POWER! Damn you! FULL POWER!
 
The acknowledgement from NASA is more of a interesting insight but the real news from this is that the drive actually exploits the quantum vacuum to create this effect. The fact that it interacts the way it does means our understand of quantum mechanics maybe even more flawed than it currently is.

Very few experiments that have practical application like this is produce results that seem to force us to redefine our understanding of its active state of interaction at the quantum level.

The Chinese have a version of this drive that is actually quite a bit more powerful than the one NASA demo'd. Its very possible to dial up the reaction making it much more manageable than carrying tons of fuel which has only a one time usage.

Let's hope NASA is fast tracking this now for a sat or deep space probe to fully test out its capability and reliability. If it all pans out then we could finally have the key to relatively easy space travel within our solar system. But its important to remember that this drive wouldn't really work well for travel to another solar system , not to say that inner solar travel isn't important.
 
Skripka said:
LMAO....they got 50 micro-Newtons of thrust. Not even enough to lift an iPhone. And you're thinking about how long it would take to reach Uranus with it? As of present-never.
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They got 50 micro-Newtons of thrust from something that shouldn't work at all according to our understanding of the universe ... so I am going to out of a limb here and say it is far from being the most efficient engine that NASA ever created.

Once the science is actually understood and they know WHY thrust was created then perhaps they will figure out how to get more thrust for the same amount of energy input.
 
Kueller said:
Except energy isn't interchangeable with momentum.
The issue at hand here is precisely how energy can be converted into momentum without any expendable mass to accelerate (fuel). I remain highly skeptical.
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In your statement 'the issue is precisely how' energy is being converted into momentum" are you saying that you are only skeptical of the method, and not of the fact it is possible? Because it is possible, and violates no rules of physics.

Put on a physics hat and think of the laws of conservation of energy: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Leaves the door open for energy to be manipulated in many ways. Now lets stretch things a little further: Mathematically, energy IS matter. (Unless Einstein was wrong e=mc^2 )

Looks like you got hung up on the classical thinking that 'energy must act on matter to produce force'. Well the definition of energy gives you a way out, since mass can be considered energy divided by the speed of light squared.

To me, this device is just using energy to act on energy to produce force (substituting the mass part of the force equation with energy/c^2). Makes sense that you kind of get to skip the whole 'you need mass' step. Again, there is no law of physics that is violated when energy acting on energy produces force.

Now that we know force can be created using just energy acting on energy, the whole 'how' part of your statement is easily addressed: The force produced acts on the matter of the device manipulating the energy, which over time produces velocity of the device and viola: Momentum.
 
Wierdo said:
Once the vehicle is in space, then there's allot of potential use for this form of propulsion I think, where there's little friction to get in the way and gravity is not keeping it tied to the planet.

I imagine liftoff will be accomplished by more traditional means until that point.
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There's no friction in space. But, there is gravity and course-correction (change) to worry about.

However, fission energy is more interesting and fun to play with.
- and, no mention of my quantum relativity drive?! (f'it... i'm also going to the Chinese if nobody takes me seriously!)
 
Kueller said:
Except energy isn't interchangeable with momentum.
The issue at hand here is precisely how energy can be converted into momentum without any expendable mass to accelerate (fuel). I remain highly skeptical.
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Microwaves are electomagnetic waves like light. As such they have a particle form, ability to transfer momentum, like light pressure and solar sails.
 
I am skeptical because this claim is based on principles we do not understand...and more importantly because the actual experimental results were inconclusive.

Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the "null" test article).
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The "Null" test article (aka "control experiment" in this case) produced thrust. When it was designed to fail. That screams to me measurement or experimental design flaw, not groundbreaking magical thruster.
 
Kueller said:
I am skeptical because this claim is based on principles we do not understand...and more importantly because the actual experimental results were inconclusive.


The "Null" test article (aka "control experiment" in this case) produced thrust. When it was designed to fail. That screams to me measurement or experimental design flaw, not groundbreaking magical thruster.
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The "null test" engine was the same shape wasn't it? If the secret is in the shape, then even ambient energy (such as light and background microwave radiation) that happens to enter the drive cone could generate measurable directional thrust. (they don't say how much thrust the dummy engine generated)

We didn't understand exactly how electricity worked at first either, but we still tried to use it, and look where it has gotten us now.
 
Most people commenting how "skeptical they are" about this drive aren't remotely qualified to assess it. There aren't enough details available for a propulsion expert to make a determination, let alone some keyboard physicists on a hardware forum.

I think the basic principles are not nonsense. But I'm willing to suspend judgement until the work can be repeated and probed further.
 
wabbitseason said:
Most people commenting how "skeptical they are" about this drive aren't remotely qualified to assess it. There aren't enough details available for a propulsion expert to make a determination, let alone some keyboard physicists on a hardware forum.
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Finally, someone with some sense here. I thought I was the only one on this board that tries to throw NASA a bone and think they actually know what they're doing.
 
wabbitseason said:
Most people commenting how "skeptical they are" about this drive aren't remotely qualified to assess it. There aren't enough details available for a propulsion expert to make a determination, let alone some keyboard physicists on a hardware forum.

I think the basic principles are not nonsense. But I'm willing to suspend judgement until the work can be repeated and probed further.
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sir-gold said:
The "null test" engine was the same shape wasn't it? If the secret is in the shape, then even ambient energy (such as light and background microwave radiation) that happens to enter the drive cone could generate measurable directional thrust. (they don't say how much thrust the dummy engine generated)

We didn't understand exactly how electricity worked at first either, but we still tried to use it, and look where it has gotten us now.
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This isn't about having the technical expertise to calculate and predict quantum vacuum interactions, this is about basic experimental methods. When the control shows the same results as the live experiment, something is hinky and we should all reserve judgement until additional experiments are performed.

I'm willing to change my views (eager in fact). But I'm not willing to change my views about things as basic as the conservation of momentum based on a single inconclusive (and unreplicated) experiment.


I've got to ask: Were you guys also onboard the "neutrinos travel faster than light" bandwagon back in '11? That turned out to be a loose cable connection messing with measurements...Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
 
Kueller said:
This isn't about having the technical expertise to calculate and predict quantum vacuum interactions, this is about basic experimental methods. When the control shows the same results as the live experiment, something is hinky and we should all reserve judgement until additional experiments are performed.

I'm willing to change my views (eager in fact). But I'm not willing to change my views about things as basic as the conservation of momentum based on a single inconclusive (and unreplicated) experiment.


I've got to ask: Were you guys also onboard the "neutrinos travel faster than light" bandwagon back in '11? That turned out to be a loose cable connection messing with measurements...Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
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"The paper refers to the symmetric test apparatus as the null test, because it was meant to test a prediction of Fetta's theory on how the device produces thrust (that the force is produced by an imbalance of the lorentz force caused by the asymmetric chamber). This test seems to indicate that Fetta's theory is incorrect (or at the very least inaccurate). Dr. White's theory on how thrust is produced however predicted that both test articles should produce thrust, which they did.

Fetta believes that it works based on asymetry in the design, while White believes it works on pushing against the quantum vacuum. They did 3 cases. An asymetric, a symetric, and a null test. The Asymetric produced thrust at the same rate in all tests, the symmetric produced varying levels of thrust depending on its orientation, and the null test produced no net thrust above background levels."
 
Kueller said:
Except energy isn't interchangeable with momentum.
The issue at hand here is precisely how energy can be converted into momentum without any expendable mass to accelerate (fuel). I remain highly skeptical.
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??? Energy = momentum x speed of light when talking about zero mass particles (such as light). The idea of light sails are not science fiction, momentum is transferred into a result, twice in fact once when it hits and it's absorbed, and another when it is emitted from the surface.


wabbitseason said:
Most people commenting how "skeptical they are" about this drive aren't remotely qualified to assess it. There aren't enough details available for a propulsion expert to make a determination, let alone some keyboard physicists on a hardware forum.

I think the basic principles are not nonsense. But I'm willing to suspend judgement until the work can be repeated and probed further.
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Are you qualified to assess it? If not then how can you say the basic principles are not nonsense. Saying they're skeptical is not exactly that much of a leap, I mean the guy who came up with the idea doesn't exactly have a background in physics either. It's like the team that said neutrinos were detected moving faster than light, most people were skeptical because things are not supposed to go faster than light, and them not being qualified to assess those results did not in anyway invalidate their skepticism. The problem here is you have headlines of "impossible drive" "violates laws of blah blah" ... yeah you're going to get some skepticism just due to the way its presented.

That said, I'm just going to sit back and wait for more information to come out, I'm not sure if the drive generates it's own energy or if they're trying to exploit vacuum field energy, or what but a guy who sets up his own website with videos is not what I'm looking for, to me that's just another nut with an idea. I'll let those qualified to assess it see if they can get it to work. Although looking back it's too bad NASA shut down their breaththrough propulsion physics lab, this would have been right up their alley.
 
So just a random idea, wouldnt microwave radiation induce a level of magnetism that could interact with the earth's magnetic field?
 
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