DailyDirt: Sailing Through Space Without Rockets
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
One of the problems with space travel is that the chemical fuels required to get around in space.. really limit how far a spacecraft can go. A spacecraft can only carry around so much fuel, and then once that fuel is gone, the ship is basically drifting in space. There are some creative solutions to this challenge, though. If you aren’t in a hurry, you can try to propel an object with the momentum of light. Or you can shoot very small atoms at high velocity to create thrust. But you cannot change the laws of physics!
- The Planetary Society is constructing a cubesat with a LightSail — a 32-square-meter Mylar sail that will capture the momentum of sunlight for propulsion. This Kickstarter campaign will help fund the $5.45 million project to build a spacecraft that will be ready to launch in 2016 (on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket) along with another satellite that will inspect the LightSail and its performance. [url]
- NASA is still trying to verify the feasibility of “EM drive” technology — that shouldn’t work at all if the universe obeys the conservation of momentum. No peer reviewed papers on this kind of propulsion exist because no one understands how to fully explain the impossible (or merely erroneous) thrust that has been detected from it. [url]
- Electrically-driven satellites using ion thrusters do actually exist, and Boeing has built two of them. These satellites with xenon-ion thrusters are already in space and will move into their operational orbits by November. A few other electric-propulsion spacecraft from Airbus and Thales Alenia Space will join these satellites in space in the near future, too. [url]
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Filed Under: em drive, ion thrusters, lightsail, planetary society, propulsion, rockets, satellites, solar sail, space, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: airbus, boeing, kickstarter, nasa, spacex, thales alenia space
Comments on “DailyDirt: Sailing Through Space Without Rockets”
Don’t forget all those 19th century perpetual motion and anti-gravity machines — most of which have had their patents long since expire.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=solar+sail
wait what , microwaves bouncing where?
so you are saying my microwave should be running around the room …oooook
Conservation of Momentum
Regarding the EM drive and Conservation of Momentum:
It is important to realize that even some aspects of science are faith-based. The fundamental principle of science is that truth is best approached via repeatable experiments that support a particular theory.
We have faith that if a particular well-defined experiment yields the exact same result 100 times, it will do so the 101st time and we can draw a reliable conclusion.
We have faith in the principle of causality (despite evidence from the quantum eraser experiment).
While there are damn good reasons (experiments and theory) to trust conservation of momentum, that too, at its root, is an article of faith.
We might be wrong about that. The EM drive may well be bogus, or our understanding or conservation of momentum imperfect, or the EM drive might well work but still conserve momentum in a way we don’t understand.
It is definitely worth further study. IMHO, it’s probably bogus, but if it isn’t, we need to know.
Re: Conservation of Momentum
Prediction of future events based upon those of the observable past might be considered by some to be faith based, others not so much.
Re: Conservation of Momentum
I am with you on this. Our understanding of physics and the laws that we have written are based on the experiments that we have performed. Therefore we assume the law of conversation of momentum is correct, which is correct until proven incorrect.
I hope there is something at work here that we don’t have the capacity to measure yet and that is what is causing this thrust.
Ion Thrusters
Ion Thrusters are interesting, but they’re not a purely electric propulsion medium. They still rely on a propellant, xenon usually, which is expelled at high speeds. They’re much more fuel efficient than chemical propellants, but they still need to carry fuel, which limits the usefulness for deep space exploration. They also tend to generate very low thrust, but by the time that we really need better thrusters that might no longer be true.
That EM drive, though…. I really hope that it’s not just a mistake, and it does operate the way people think.
Re: Ion Thrusters
That matches well with the low power available from solar panels, or even RTG generators. it has allowed the Dawn spacecraft to visit both Vesta and Ceres.
Re: Re: Ion Thrusters
Solar panels will not do you much good in deep space, and are not presently used in missions beyond Mars.
there are no air bubbles floating in water, in any “space walk” videos around the ISS right?
Nor have their “space suits” accidentally get filled with WATER?
do some research and you have to admit half of the ISS videos are fake!
Re: Re:
Other than math textbooks, is it common place for someone to make statements and then say that the proof is up to the reader?
Re: Re:
Spacesuits have had problems with flooding because they do contain water in the course of their ordinary use in space.
Spacewalking is a very laborious activity because the suits are bulky, difficult to move in, and every movement requires the astronaut to brace against something to be effective. (For example, if you’re floating and try to turn a bolt with a wrench, you’ll just rotate yourself around unless you’re braced on something) This means that spacesuits need water for astronauts to drink, because they get sweaty and dehydrated inside the suits (before the need for hand and footholds was recognized, astronauts on spacewalks were known to sweat so much trying to do simple tasks that they’d lose pounds of weight at a time). Also, people generate body heat and therefore need cooling. A suit of mesh underwear is worn under the suit and has flexible tubes filled with water running through it to help carry heat away to the life support equipment in the backpack (and thus provide cooling).
And of course if there is a water leak inside the suit, because the water is weightless, it can’t be made to just run down to the astronaut’s feet or something. Even a small amount can float around the helmet (where the astronaut cannot reach to move it) potentially causing aspiration or even asphyxiation.
The ISS is very real, it’s even easy to see from the ground if you know where to look. And footage of astronauts in suits practicing underwater looks entirely different from footage of them in space.
(Besides, if it were all a conspiracy, and God only knows what the point of that would be, why would the fact of water leaks — presumably caused by water leaking in from a pool — ever get revealed?)
tl;dr — you’re an idiot
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