[Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

[Langy]

Originally Posted by malloyd

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.

What you seem to be missing is that they did do that. They just didn't succeed in doing that when they did something different to the drive other than 'turn it off' or 'turn it around'.

But yeah, it still looks like an error in the testing to me.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

I grant that at the end of the available bit they seem to have started making proclamations about theoretical implications, which seem likely to be bunk on the basis of this.

However, I don't care about those claims one way or the other, so...

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

If you knew what you were doing, there'd be no point in running an experiment.

[0B1-KN0B]

I have noticed that NASA has been publishing a lot of questionable ideas in the past decade or so. My suspicion is that they're doing so to avoid accusations of a cover-up or ignoring non-establishment scientists. Take the results as given, run a series of cheap tests that gives the original experimenter publicity, then run a slightly more expensive and rigorous series of tests that eliminate the wiggle room for error or fraud, and follow up with a press release saying how disappointed everyone is that it didn't work.

Science-illiterate Congresscritter: "Why are you ignoring Doctor Lizardo's ground-breaking work on the R-pressure electrodynamic thruster?"

NASA Spokescritter: "Oh, we tested that. The tests are on YouTube if you want to see them. Sadly it turned out to be an ordinary stiction device. We're very disappointed. Incidentally, did Doctor Lizardo ever bother to mention to you that their PhD is in literature?"

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

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.

You missed the bit where the thing stops working if it causes the vehicle to accelerate.

What it would do (in defiance of the Principle of Equivalence) is to support the car at any altitude in a 2,000-g gravity field. Hence my suggestion that what this gadget replaces is wings and rotors. (And wheels, and air fusions, and jacks.)

[0B1-KN0B]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

You missed the bit where the thing stops working if it causes the vehicle to accelerate.

What it would do (in defiance of the Principle of Equivalence) is to support the car at any altitude in a 2,000-g gravity field. Hence my suggestion that what this gadget replaces is wings and rotors. (And wheels, and air fusions, and jacks.)

That part confused me. It can't accelerate a mass but it can sustain a velocity? The physics seem very wonky to me.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by 0B1-KN0B

That part confused me. It can't accelerate a mass but it can sustain a velocity? The physics seem very wonky to me.

Almost as though it device obeyed Newton's third law of motion but not his second.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by 0B1-KN0B

I have noticed that NASA has been publishing a lot of questionable ideas in the past decade or so.

Most of this stuff is "published" by NASA only in the sense that they print material sent in by the people making the claims. The way it works is NASA has some budget to spend on something or other and calls for proposals. They get some, many of which have nothing to do with the topic the funds are actually for, or are outright nonsense, and hence have no chance at all of actually being funded, but since all of them are now public documents NASA would be legally obligated to release if anybody asked, and somebody is certain to ask to know what the bids that didn't get the money were for as part of seeing whether the money was spent properly, they just print them all.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

Remember the "FTL particles" story from late 2011? The experimenters said, basically, "we've got timings for a tau neutrino that seem to indicate it's moving faster than light – this is obviously wrong, so please help us debug our experimental setup". It was the mass media that leaped on it with glad cries of "scientists have invented warp drive".

[Agemegos]

Similarly with the anomalous accelerations of Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Or the discrepancy between surface-measured and satellite-measured warming of Earth's surface.

Scientists looked for oversights and measurement errors; science journalists (and crackpots) looked for new physical principles.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

You missed the bit where the thing stops working if it causes the vehicle to accelerate.

What it would do (in defiance of the Principle of Equivalence) is to support the car at any altitude in a 2,000-g gravity field. Hence my suggestion that what this gadget replaces is wings and rotors. (And wheels, and air fusions, and jacks.)

Basically, if this thing works, it's a contragravity device, then?