New NASA engine can get to Mars in weeks...instead of months

KahBoom

Appropriate Star-Trek-inspired name for the engine - "Ye Cannae™ change the laws o' physics!"

Tail Docker

In the interests of Science, I have tested this for Nasa - I jammed a generator into the hiace and plugged in the microwave with the door open and the safety catch bypassed - facing rearwards. Not sure how far Mars is tbh, but it took a fair few shots of the old diesel engine just to get moving and when I switched purely to micro-thrust progress was less than stellar. That and the generator ran out of petrol after two hours. I had gone 4km.

Considering the destination I chose for the test was Naas, and I failed on my ar5e, something tells me Mars might be a stretch.

Frank Lee Midere

The link without the space.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/1/5959637/nasa-cannae-drive-tests-have-promising-results

Capt'n Midnight

Love the claims about NASA verifying it

only three hits for Cannae Drive on nasa.gov and none on jpl.gov

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052

This paper describes the eight-day August 2013 test campaign designed to investigate and demonstrate viability of using classical magnetoplasmadynamics to obtain a propulsive momentum transfer via the quantum vacuum virtual plasma. This paper will not address the physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster, but instead will describe the test integration, test operations, and the results obtained from the test campaign. Approximately 30-50 micro-Newtons of thrust were recorded from an electric propulsion test article consisting primarily of a radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity excited at approximately 935 megahertz. Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure.

door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure. - really ? :rolleyes:

any idea of how much power it needs ?


I'd love to be wrong but it's sounding like Orbo-tech

Bafucin

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Love the claims about NASA verifying it

only three hits for Cannae Drive on nasa.gov and none on jpl.gov

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052

door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure. - really ? :rolleyes:

any idea of how much power it needs ?


I'd love to be wrong but it's sounding like Orbo-tech

They were only able to verify that the force was not generated by something other than the test system.

They still have no bloody idea if or why it actually works or not. Basically it equates to, all they know is during the testing the man was not blowing at it from behind a curtain.

door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure.

This is mech eng dirty talk :cool:

I think this says it all really.

"This paper will not address the physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster, but instead will describe the test integration, test operations, and the results obtained from the test campaign."

We will not talk about the numbers cuz we knows the numbers is well dodgy, we'll push it down the hill and watch it go!



Back in the 90s, Nasa tested what was claimed to be an antigravity device based on spinning superconducting discs. That was reported to give good test results, until researchers realised that interference from the device was affecting their measuring instruments. They have probably learned a lot since then.


Nasa had avoided trying to explain the results and has focused on reporting what it found.

Sure tis a day at the beach and all good fun. Mech Eng does not get in the news much!

Bafucin

KahBoom wrote: »

Appropriate Star-Trek-inspired name for the engine - "Ye Cannae™ change the laws o' physics!"

I love this!

steddyeddy

From PC magazine

NASA Validates 'Physics Defying' Space Drive

By Damon Poeter 08/03/2014 5:28 p.m.

NASA recently tested an experimental microwave thruster for a radical new type of spacecraft propulsion system—and to the surprise of researchers, the "physics-defying," fuel-less space drive appears to actually work.
Fuel takes up an enormous amount of space and weighs down current spacecraft, so it would be a tremendous breakthrough to essentially eliminate the need for it, as the "EmDrive" promises to do.
The drive generates thrust by "bouncing microwaves around in closed container" without any need for propellant, according to Wired UK, which has been following the work of its inventor for several years.
That would be Roger Shawyer, a British scientist who in 2001 formed a company called SPR to promote his EmDrive, though to little avail in the face of critics who "reject[ed] his relativity-based theory and insist[ed] that, according to the law of conservation of momentum, it cannot work."
Until recently that is.
Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers built and tested an EmDrive a couple of years ago, reporting in November 2012 that they had achieved success with the experiment.
"At an input power of 2.5kW, their 2.45GHz EmDrive thruster provides 720mN of thrust," Shawyer's SPR site noted. Those numbers meant propulsion delivered by an EmDrive could be "enough for a practical satellite thruster," Wired noted.
Such a drive would still need a power input, but the thrusters "could be powered by solar electricity, eliminating the need for the supply of propellant that occupies up to half the launch mass of many satellites," the tech site said.
Now a second EmDrive-like thruster has been built by U.S. scientist Guido Fetta, who recently worked with a five-person NASA research team at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to test it. Like the Chinese effort, Fetta's "Cannae Drive" actually works "in spite of the law of conservation of momentum," Wired said.
"The torsion balance they used to test the thrust was sensitive enough to detect a thrust of less than ten micronewtons, but the drive actually produced 30 to 50 micronewtons—less than a thousandth of the Chinese results, but emphatically a positive result," according to the site, which reviewed a paper presented by the NASA team at last week's 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
For now, EmDrives and Cannae Drives are clearly still in the experimental stages. There's certainly a big question to be answered about how the Chinese researchers were supposedly able to create a practical thruster while Fetta's effort would need to be vastly improved to ever actually move a spacecraft around.
But for a space community looking at everything from solar sails to ion drives as a means to travel more efficiently between the planets—as well as for potential asteroid deflection missions —another innovative propulsion system is likely to get a long, studious look.

Tail Docker

Guidos work is always a bit cheesy.

Sir Arthur Daley

What is its potential speed in kph?

Frank Lee Midere

Hmm. There is energy being collected by this system producing thrust in a manner we can't understand but not necessarily a violation of physical laws.

Capt'n Midnight

steddyeddy wrote: »

From PC magazine

"At an input power of 2.5kW, their 2.45GHz EmDrive thruster provides 720mN of thrust,"

2.5Kw will cause a lot of air currents , not to mention the magnetic and electrostatic effects.

Look at the ISS http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/solar_arrays.html

Two blankets of solar cells make up a solar array wing, or SAW. Each wing is 115 feet long by 38 feet wide. Each SAW weighs more than 2,400 pounds and uses 32,800 solar array cells. Image Credit: NASA

...
Altogether, the four sets of arrays can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity

So 2,400lbs of panels will generate between 21-30Kw

let's say a tonne of panels will generate 25KW , you now have 0.0072 N of thrust.

F=MA so you you now have 7.2 micro g's of acceleration

after one week you'll have a speed of 3.27m/s

so it'll take about 2,000 weeks to get anywhere since you need Km/s velocities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Earth-Moon_space_.E2.80.94_low_thrust


Anyone remember VASIMR and 39 days to Mars ?
It's the same BS of assuming an infinite power supply and no mass apart from the motor. It's like saying my car would have an amazing power to weight ratio if I got rid of the wheels and body and fuel tank until the only thing left was an engine and then I changed that for an electric motor.