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NASA Veteran Behind Propellantless Propulsion Drive Announces Major Discovery -...

 2 weeks ago
source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/223206/nasa-veteran-behind-propellantless-propulsion-drive-announces-major-discovery
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NASA Veteran Behind Propellantless Propulsion Drive Announces Major Discovery

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Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth's gravity. "The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred," Buhler told The Debrief. "This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass." "There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before," Buhler added. "It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes." To document his team's discovery as well as the process behind their work, which Dr. Buhler cautions is in no way affiliated with NASA or the U.S. Government, the outwardly amiable researcher presented his findings at a recent Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). Filled with both highly-credentialed career engineers and propulsion hobbyists, APEC is an organization The Debrief once referred to as the World's Most Exclusive (And Strange) Anti-Gravity Club. In conjunction with that presentation, "The Discovery of Propellantless Propulsion: The Direct Conversion of Electrical Energy into Physical Thrust," Dr. Buhler also sat down with APEC co-founder and moderator Tim Ventura to explain how his past in electrostatics, which is his primary area of expertise, ended up being a key component of his discovery of this new force. [...] Up next, Buhler says his team is seeking funding to test their devices in space to better understand the force at work. "We're hoping to do some demos," said Buhler. "Some space demos. That's what we're trying to get some funding to do. I think that would be a great way to show off the technology." Besides proving once and for all that the force they are seeing is real, the accomplished engineer believes that such tests could encourage other scientists to search for an explanation of what exactly it is they are seeing. "I think it's a good opportunity for people to run these tests, look at them, watch them go in space, watch it move in space, and then say, "what does it imply? What are the implications?'" Until that time, Buhler says he believes his work proves that the force they are seeing is "fundamental" and that understanding it is the next logical step. "You can't deny this," he told Ventura. "There's not a lot to this. You're just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust." So, while his team believes their experiments speak for themselves, the veteran scientist says he also believes it is the job of science to analyze and understand this discovery. If successful, he thinks it may even address some of the harder questions in science, including the nature of dark energy or even space/time itself. "It's easy to make these things," he said, "so it's a tool for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions." If there are companies or individuals interested in working with Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler asks that they reach out via their LinkedIn page.

he could easily demonstrate and experiment with it on the ground. So why ask for investment to go to Space? The cold fusion guys at least published stuff and let the community debunk it instead of asking for investments. I don't say the 4 letter s-word.
Exactly what bothered me. If they can counter gravity on earth with "1g" of thrust, they can amaze everyone tomorrow by a public demonstration with journalists, scientists and all and they'd have billions of investor money instantly. So something smells like fish oil here.
  • Re:

    TFA says that only the part that actually does the magic can generate 1g of thrust but adding stuff to it like landing gear, gyroscopes, control fins, etc would be too much.

    I don't know why he cares about generating 1g of trust on earth's surface anyway. Generating a tiny fracton of that in space over a long period of time is fantastic, if he could really do it, which, well, we all remember the EmDrive, which they sent up to space last year but never actually managed to test somehow, but which has recieved

    • I'm also not sure that this "1g" representation is an honest one? Is it one g for what kind of weight? It's enough thrust to counter how much weight? That's why this might be misleading.
      • Re:

        1g... one gravity. Earth gravity acceleration.
        Not "grams".

        • Re:

          Waddya mean? Here's this new force of nature in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com];^)

          Measuring thrust in G's is a bit of weirdness too.

          This has all of the earmarks of a bog standard 21st century grift. We can expect one of those 3D animations on Youtube to "prove" how this thing works.

        • The Sophons are messing with his experiments
    • He doesn't need to go to space. He just needs to strap the magic machine on a cart in an icerink and let it push the cart forward at 1g.
      • Re:

        Or put it on the outside of a wheel, make it go in circles, then power a generator off it, and tap off some of the power for the propellentless drive...

        And sell the infinite free energy at a profit.

        But it's NOT a perpetual motion machine, see, it's a magical physics drive so it MIGHT work, because he left that bit off so it's OK it might be in flagrant violation of the laws of Thermodynamics (as well as conservation of momentum).

        The whole reactionless drive actually being a thinly disguised perpetual motion

        • Re:

          Why does Thermodynamics require humiliation as its last resort, and was Eddington perhaps making a snide criticism of thermodynamics and its ultimately human psychological underpinning?

          • Re:

            Minor pronoun antecedent problem I suppose.

            He's saying if your theory violates the laws of thermodynamics then your theory (i.e. you) will collapse in humiliation. Thermodynamics will always win.

            • Re:

              Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
              Sir Arthur Eddington
              English astronomer (1882 - 1944)

              What if violations of thermodynamics are too strange for your poor brains to imagine, yet?

              • Re:

                What if violations of thermodynamics are too strange for your poor brains to imagine, yet?

                We can imagine all sorts of violations of the laws of thermodynamics. Space opera sci-fi runs on them, for example. The problem isn't a lack of imagination, it's that we can see what the consequences of our imagination are and the results are absurd.

                I am very very confident that perpetual motion machines cannot exist in this universe, and to say otherwise is possibly the most extraordinary of claims. It is therefore go

                • Re:

                  Universe itself seems to be perpetually in motion.

            • Re:

              There already are violations of laws of thermodynamics, we just overlook them at the given scale the problem occurs.

              Particles in a 100% sealed vacuum spontaneously appear. Heisenberg's principle also comes into play here.

              How do these randomly appearing particles not violate the first law? Where does their heat energy come from if there was nothing there prior? How did they get there?

              • I love how your sig says "unite behind the science" and then say... well, all of that!

                The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy. That has literally everything to do with all of physics everywhere. It is baked into every physical law we have described at the deepest level. They are all time invariant so energy must be conserved.

                I'm curious as to how you think you can just pick and choose which bits of physics apply, and why you think loud, angry responses make that so. But do go on.

                • Re:

                  Omg this is fucking hilarious.

                  If only there was an internet where you could check this stuff before embarrassing yourself. The train you are getting modded down is because you are saying wrong things and I'm getting modded up for saying things that are actually informative.

                  Anyway here's some internet for you:

                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

                  That's not conservation of energy, that's about equilibrium.

                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

                  That is about conservation of energy, it says so on the first line. Here let

              • That might be the most myopic description I've ever heard of thermodynamics. That's like saying the field of electronics is all about how electrons move through copper.

                Thermodynamics is an enormous field of which gas dynamics is a very tiny fraction. More generally, thermodynamics describes how energy moves between its various forms, what factors affect those changes in form, and the fundamental laws that govern those transformations. I would even hazard to say that description itself may be too narrow.

                From the scant details given, it seems the technology discussed here is about converting the energy stored in electrical fields to kinetic energy. That very much involves thermodynamics, and at least the very first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but only change forms.

                • If you read your own reference to the thermodynamics definition given by Wikipedia you will see it is not only about heat but about energy, of which heat is one form. So it turns out that yes electrical systems have to obey the laws of thermodynamics, although of course those aren't the only laws you need to understand. Thinking about an electric car as a thermodynamic system, the entropy of the batteries increases as the potential energy is used to drive electrons through the wires powering the motors. S
        • Re:

          I think propellentless and taking no energy are very different things. The claim as I make it out to be is thrust without propellent. Much like an electric motor can provide but the motor cannot provide thrust in space. It would still take energy input. However if you want free energy you can use your same wheel connected to a turbine powered by the wind, free money go ahead use that. (I am pointing this out to say that your idea of turning his thrust into money by generating power seems to be economically
          • Re:

            I think propellentless and taking no energy are very different things.

            I disagree, because the claim isn't that propellentless requires no energy it's that if you are given a propellentless drive, you can construct a machine which outputs more energy than is required to run it. This means a propellentless drive is equivalent to a perpetual motion machine, so since the latter cannot exist, the former cannot as well.

            Here's the thing. Assume you have a drive that produces 1N per Watt of power with no propellant

            • Re:

              exactly, you could spin up a flywheel, then slow it down with regenerative braking and extract all that free energy.
              • Re:

                What did you use to spin up the flywheel?

            • Re:

              That's an extreme formulation. It does imply that certain efficiencies would be equivalent to perpetual motion, but if the amount of energy required were sufficient to offset the gain in relativistic mass & potential energy I don't believe the argument fails. And it might be able to use half that energy, as the contradiction doesn't occur until it returns to the origin. And there's no thermodynamic reason that staying stable in a gravitational field should require any energy. (Anything in orbit is an

            • Re:

              Propellantless satellite drives exist. They work against the Earth's magnetic field. As long as there is input power, you can push/pull against the magnetic fields without using propellant. Whether there is an exchange of particles... depends on your model of the physics.
            • I generally agree with you, but the issue I'm having with your example is that it starts with something producing a certain amount of force per watt (e.g., 1 N per W). Any example starting with that will run into the paradox that you're referring to. So the more general claim is that it's impossible to create a machine that produces a constant force per unit energy expended, correct? Are the inventors claiming their "drive" can do that? If so, I don't need any more evidence to decide that it's total nonse

          • Re:

            If relativity works, then it would produce the same thrust at any velocity. The power that represents is F * V, If the drive power required is less than F * C (wich C the speed of light), you get free energy. If the power required is >= F * C, then its just a photon drive, and requires too much power for any practical application
        • Re:

          Does the fact that it's propellantless necessarily make it a perpetual motion machine? The thing still needs power, and presumably you'll have to put in as much (or more) energy to make it go than any kinetic or potential energy it'll gain. Compare it to an electric coil levitating in an electric field, except this thing pushes against... I don't know, invisible unicorns maybe. Seems improbable, but not because it somehow has to be a perpetual motion machine. Unless I am missing something in the lack of
        • Re:

          Your sig has just had new life breathed into it.

          First thing I thought of is that if this thing has 1G of thrust, it would be unencumbered by earth's gravity so would escape earth's gravity well. But that's what happens when we use made up terms for thrust. People just never give up on that perpetual motion stuff. This is the 21st century people, can't we at least make new claims based on harnessing zero point energy?

          I guess he's basing his "new force of nature" on the silly old lab experiments of levita

          • Re:

            It's been a few years, but wasn't the previous engine's "thrust" debunked by noting a front to back temperature differential?

            Possibly, I'd even say probably but I've lost track. The problem is it's a never ending game of whac-a-mole, where after every debunking there's another minor inconsequential variation, or new meaningless claim. No acknowledgement is ever made of course of the previous array of debunked claims.

            I think they started off with deriving it mathematically. It was debunked by pointing out

          • Re:

            Look at the bold part in the quote: how the funk would that work?

            It wouldn't. That's the point.

            IF the propellentless drive worked, you could get free energy. You cannot get free energy. Therefore the propellentles drive cannot exist.

            Anyway, I know this will be met with a flurry of invective, which you will turn around so that somehow you no longer accept the thing you literally pointed out to me (which you seemed to not realise was precisely my point) and somehow come round to the conclusion that propellent

          • Re:

            Just get Rodney Mckay to borrow the energy from the next dimension over - no debt in our univers.
      • Re:

        he would still need the fund to rebuild the ice rink, (if it works)
    • Re:

      You wouldn't need that much force to be useful.
      Even a minimal non-propellant force in outer space would be useful.
      The voyager 1 is coasting but if something like Voyager 1
      that has a RTGs powered by plutonium and could continually gain
      momentum year over year using nothing but the electricity it generates,
      it could continue to accelerate every year and cover a lot more distance.
      The voyager 1 is going about 38000 miles an hour but in space with no
      vacuum, even a tiny thrust could increase that significantly.
      If y


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