Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-01-2014, 04:31 PM   #21
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I really think 'we have a reactionless drive and it turns out we don't understand its mechanism' would be enormously exciting. The incremental excitement of 'also, we know how to make it not work' seems rather minor.
To understand why this is a problem, consider substituting a lightbulb for the device. You turn it off and continue to measure the same amount of light. Which is more likely (a) you have invented a lightbulb that doesn't need electricity or (b) your photometer is broken.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:37 PM   #22
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
To understand why this is a problem, consider substituting a lightbulb for the device. You turn it off and continue to measure the same amount of light. Which is more likely (a) you have invented a lightbulb that doesn't need electricity or (b) your photometer is broken.
That's a pretty bad analogy, though. They didn't say that the device worked when it was turned off.

If you made two lightbulbs, one with a filament material you had been told would work and one with a material you thought wouldn't work, and you measure light from both, do you conclude that the photometer must be broken? EDIT: To extend the analogy, when measuring something that was not at all like a light bulb, they (implicitly) did not measure light...
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident.

Last edited by Ulzgoroth; 08-01-2014 at 04:42 PM.
Ulzgoroth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:41 PM   #23
0B1-KN0B
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
That's a pretty bad analogy, though. They didn't say that the device worked when it was turned off.

If you made two lightbulbs, one with a filament material you had been told would work and one with a material you thought wouldn't work, and you measure light from both, do you conclude that the photometer must be broken?
If they both produce the same amount of light, yes.

If someone gives you instructions on how to build a device and you deliberatly build a malfunctioning device but the test results come out the same, then the test is broken.
__________________
When choosing your user name, DO NOT get clever. Typing that combination of letters, numbers, and special characters every time you want to log in will get old really fast.
0B1-KN0B is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:44 PM   #24
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by 0B1-KN0B View Post
If they both produce the same amount of light, yes.

If someone gives you instructions on how to build a device and you deliberatly build a malfunctioning device but the test results come out the same, then the test is broken.
Or you're wrong about how to make the device malfunction.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident.
Ulzgoroth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:44 PM   #25
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
If you made two lightbulbs, one with a filament material you had been told would work and one with a material you thought wouldn't work, and you measure light from both, do you conclude that the photometer must be broken?
Not necessarily, but you also don't report it as a successful test. What you do is a teardown of all your equipment to figure out why you're getting anomalous results.

You have to understand, they don't have a reactionless drive that they don't understand how works. They have anomalous sensor readings of unknown origin. One theory is that the anomalous sensor readings were caused by a an EmDrive effect, but that theory has already been falsified. At that point, there's no reason to even consider reactionless at all, as there are lots of potential reasons for anomalous sensor readings.
__________________
My GURPS site and Blog.
Anthony is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:49 PM   #26
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Not necessarily, but you also don't report it as a successful test. What you do is a teardown of all your equipment to figure out why you're getting anomalous results.

You have to understand, they don't have a reactionless drive that they don't understand how works. They have anomalous sensor readings of unknown origin. One theory is that the anomalous sensor readings were caused by a an EmDrive effect, but that theory has already been falsified. At that point, there's no reason to even consider reactionless at all, as there are lots of potential reasons for anomalous sensor readings.
I do not understand how lacking a sound theoretical understanding of why a phenomenon occurs makes the occurrence totally uninteresting.

Maybe because I'm in biology, where the soundness of our theoretical understanding of almost anything tops out at 'dubious'.

However, I really cannot see how 'our attempt to build a non-functional variant yielded the same results as the supposedly working example' translates directly to 'clearly everything we measured is some kind of experimental artifact', which is where you seem to be taking it.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident.
Ulzgoroth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:50 PM   #27
RogerBW
 
RogerBW's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Just to clarify that a little, at 30 N/W, space drives are not your market, you need to talk to outboard motor manufacturers instead. This beats the performance of the marine engines by a factor of about 100.
Feed my 110kW car engine's output through a 30N/W converter and it'll accelerate said car at over 2,000 gravities. That makes every other form of transport obsolete.
RogerBW is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:53 PM   #28
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
That's a pretty bad analogy, though. They didn't say that the device worked when it was turned off.

If you made two lightbulbs, one with a filament material you had been told would work and one with a material you thought wouldn't work, and you measure light from both, do you conclude that the photometer must be broken?
You haven't shown that it isn't. If you are unable to find anything you can make the filament out of that does nothing, then yes that's a plausible conclusion (the other alternative is the filament doesn't actually have anything to do with the effect at all, take it out entirely and see what happens).

If you want to convince anybody you have tiny level of reactionless thrust you *must* be able to run the experiment with everything but some key element and get no thrust. If you can't, then by far the most reasonable conclusion is something about your experimental setup is causing your measurements to be wrong.

Incidentally since there is well known and incredibly cheap first order test for atmospheric interaction - wrap your pendulum in a clear plastic garbage bag, tie it around the suspension wire and see if the machine still works. You can safely assume that failure to report the result of that test indicates either the experimenters don't know what they are doing, or do know this will cause the device not to work and are running a fraud.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 04:59 PM   #29
0B1-KN0B
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

If the device is built according to the principles described in the theory, then any device that isn't built according to those principles won't work. It would be exactly like trying to build a diesel engine according to a design that violates basic thermodynamics. If the theory is built after the fact to explain misunderstood results - such as mistaking ion wind propulsion for reactionless propulsion, which is an incredibly common mistake - then almost any device capable of producing an ion wind effect will produce the same results.
__________________
When choosing your user name, DO NOT get clever. Typing that combination of letters, numbers, and special characters every time you want to log in will get old really fast.
0B1-KN0B is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-01-2014, 05:12 PM   #30
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I do not understand how lacking a sound theoretical understanding of why a phenomenon occurs makes the occurrence totally uninteresting.
It's not, but if you have a possibly interesting phenomenon, don't declare it to be something that clearly violates known physics until you've done a rather thorough investigation of the alternatives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
However, I really cannot see how 'our attempt to build a non-functional variant yielded the same results as the supposedly working example' translates directly to 'clearly everything we measured is some kind of experimental artifact', which is where you seem to be taking it.
It means "You don't know what you're doing". It's possible (if unlikely) that something interesting is going on, but there's no reason to think it has anything to do with the initial theory.
__________________
My GURPS site and Blog.
Anthony is online now   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
spaceships

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:22 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.