Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

NASA's device supposedly produced 1/20,000 times the thrust of the Chinese device. That's 0.000000075 gee per system of drive, supposing that it was about the same size.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

Would that be useful even for interstellar trips?

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

It may be competitive with Lightsails for extrasolar propulsion. Lightsails have a thrust of 0.0001G per system, but that is only at 1 AU. At 100 AU (the distance of the Heliosheath) a Lightsail will be producing 1e-8 G per system, compared to the NASA experiment's 7.5e-8 G. A Magsail provides better thrust (1e-7 G at 100 AU), but doesn't function at all in the interstellar medium.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

Not with any plausible power plant. At TL 8 a fission plant, lasting 25 years, is basically a fuel tank for this thing, providing delta-vee of 0.36 miles per second per system.

With the Chinese results each fission plant would provide 7,210 miles per second of delta-vee per system. Which violates conservation of energy.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

They've discovered a way around conservation of energy? Genius! And they say China isn't a leader in technological innovation!

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

Only if the thrust produces acceleration. If Shawyer is correct about thrust dropping off rapidly as the apparatus accelerates along the thrust axis then they have invented a sort of brake.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

YES!!! Sign me up for the Kickstarter for the first batch of air-rafts. I want me one of those. I have my vid-phone (Skype), I have my personal robot servant (Roomba). Now I just need the air-raft and I'll be happily living in the future.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

That could still be pretty useful for space travel, currently the only ways to slow down aerobraking, which has upper limits on how fast you can be going before hand, and counter acceleration, which doubles how much fuel you need

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

It's an odd sort of brake. It doesn't prevent movement (of course) but acceleration.

Re: [Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines
 

The FAQ didn't seem to me to say that the device prevents acceleration, but rather than it becomes much less efficient if the device accelerates along its thrust vector, lowering its Q. That is, if I'm interpreting the technobabble from question 18 correctly, the device isn't good for accelerating itself (and things attached to it) along its thrust vector, but it doesn't inhibit other system's acceleration along that line, or oppose their thrust, as though it were thrusting in reaction to the movement.

Question 7 suggests that the loss of thrust comes from lowering the energy in the thruster. This one doesn't make sense to me, as I assume a production device wouldn't just pump in all the energy before launch, so that the device is its own fuel tank, but would take along a generator of some sort to keep the energy level in the resonant cavity at the desired level.