The Astronomy Thread
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Denamian
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Shit, 98% where I live and it's a relatively short drive up to Plattsburgh for 100%.
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Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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Guess I gotta weigh it: Spend money on a plane ticket and go to Kentucky, or wait 7 years and just drive for a couple hours ;p
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Scoresby
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Kiroy
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EmDrive: China claims success with this 'reactionless' engine for space travel
hmm I hope if this turns out to be a real thing we're keeping up with china's testing and adaption.
hmm I hope if this turns out to be a real thing we're keeping up with china's testing and adaption.
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iannis
Musty Nester
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I also want to believe.
Historically though, China saying "IT WORKS!" is about a 50/50 indication of it being bullshit.
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Was going to post something similar.
Like Mao's reports of the efficacy of their farming collectives. "All harvests are up by %127 this year thanks to the Dear Altruistic Leader!!!" All this while tens of millions of the very peasants who farmed that grain to begin with ended up starving to death....for the very reason that those numbers were falsely reported to be so high in the first place. Their desire for political conformity (@Olscratch) among the polity caused the Party-Men to legally record harvests that were not only not true, but were not actually ever possible in the physical universe that we occupy.
I don't mean to politicize Astronomy. I just want to bolster Iannis in his claim that modern China was practically founded on the idea of false reports.
"This 500 acre farm produced 700 million tons of rice for the Nation in only 4 months! All hail the Centralized Master Plan!"
Maybe they have an EM, and maybe they totally are full of shit.
Be objective.
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NASA saying it works in their tests is pretty objective evidence.
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LachiusTZ
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Dont think NASA has said it works . . . have they? Only that they dont know it doesnt work?
Forgot all the details, but they ruled out all kinds of jazz, but did not have a "Yes this is real" statement attached.
Is that the first test done in orbit / not on earth? Should be able to get a definitive yay or nay on it . . . as definitive as it gets w/ the Chinese anyway.
Forgot all the details, but they ruled out all kinds of jazz, but did not have a "Yes this is real" statement attached.
Is that the first test done in orbit / not on earth? Should be able to get a definitive yay or nay on it . . . as definitive as it gets w/ the Chinese anyway.
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iannis
Musty Nester
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NASA said that within a very limited range of testing it seems to work.
And then there were all sort of objections to their methodology for defining that limited range.
Which is how peer review works.
The surprising thing is that is if it was pure quackery -- that much should have been proven by now. This isn't like Italian cold fusion where one man owns the machine and won't let anyone else touch it. So -something- is being observed which is either new or unexpected or simply a surprising consequence which, up until now, hasn't been intuited.
The argument is over what that is, exactly. And also there's an observational argument, the "is that even a real thing?" argument. But another few years will see that observational argument answered definitively.
I don't really understand why JPL and Lockheed and SpaceX and industry leaders didn't jump on this immediately. Testing it requires real expertise and a real refinement -- it's not like some dude is going to prove or disprove it in his garage. But -- for something like this? Having the first industrial iteration of a completely new engine? Well -- it's risky, but the reward is vast and the initial investment is vanishingly small.
Maybe they have been doing internal tests. I remember about a year ago there were two major american Aerospace companies that opened up a division for the EM Drive. Maybe the real place to look is at the funding of those divisions rather than at peer reviewed physics journals. This is either one of those technologies that is going to be patented BEFORE it becomes developed, or is complete snake oil.
And then there were all sort of objections to their methodology for defining that limited range.
Which is how peer review works.
The surprising thing is that is if it was pure quackery -- that much should have been proven by now. This isn't like Italian cold fusion where one man owns the machine and won't let anyone else touch it. So -something- is being observed which is either new or unexpected or simply a surprising consequence which, up until now, hasn't been intuited.
The argument is over what that is, exactly. And also there's an observational argument, the "is that even a real thing?" argument. But another few years will see that observational argument answered definitively.
I don't really understand why JPL and Lockheed and SpaceX and industry leaders didn't jump on this immediately. Testing it requires real expertise and a real refinement -- it's not like some dude is going to prove or disprove it in his garage. But -- for something like this? Having the first industrial iteration of a completely new engine? Well -- it's risky, but the reward is vast and the initial investment is vanishingly small.
Maybe they have been doing internal tests. I remember about a year ago there were two major american Aerospace companies that opened up a division for the EM Drive. Maybe the real place to look is at the funding of those divisions rather than at peer reviewed physics journals. This is either one of those technologies that is going to be patented BEFORE it becomes developed, or is complete snake oil.
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LachiusTZ
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I thought they said they couldnt say it didnt work. And eliminated X factors as possibilities for why it seemed to work. I know someone that is, arms length from the research? Maybe forearm's length? I asked him about it a year or so ago (whenever it first flashed on here, and we had the spaceflight forums linked by Tuco) and the question seemed to annoy him a bit.
Either way, the real test is being done now (in theory) by the Chinese. Put the goddamned thing in space, turn it on, and if it slowly starts to fly off . . . it works. If not, welp, maybe one of those ancient alien spinning mercury things is the ticket.
Either way, the real test is being done now (in theory) by the Chinese. Put the goddamned thing in space, turn it on, and if it slowly starts to fly off . . . it works. If not, welp, maybe one of those ancient alien spinning mercury things is the ticket.
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Ukerric
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It also costs money.
At the moment, the vast majority of people is completely convinced that it doesn't work. That whatever force they're measuring is an artefact of the system, not some strange and unknown effect.
This is compounded by the fact that the effect doesn't seem to scale much, which means that, if it gets confirmed, might be completely useless in practice. I had an article, I think on Discovery, that was essentially saying that the current take from the paper, assuming it's real, is about 2-3% of the efficiency of Hall Effect drives for LEO (meaning it's useless on satellites), and for far space, it would be more efficient than a rocket if you want to go to Jupiter. Maybe beyond.
So, yea. At this point, there doesn't seem to be compelling reasons to follow up on it unless you have spare money to burn, or a huge desire to believe.
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Ukerric
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Ecept that the Chinese appear to do it "indoor" (in Tiangong 2), not space, and their claim is "It works. Trust us." (zero details on exactly how they test, what they test, etc)
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LachiusTZ
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Yeah, saw it was being done on the station, didnt know if that meant inside the station or it went up in a package to the station to be put into space and tested.
I dunno, I would be amazing if it is a real thing. Would allow for real space exploration to begin, supply lines to Mars etc to be created, etc etc. Like I said, the guy I asked seemed kind of annoyed about it, so I have never asked again.
I do agree w/ the poster saying follow the $$$, if there has been a surge of $$$$ into the research, someone knows (or there is enough hope to validate dollars) something.
This is also when I truly miss Lumie. He would be all over this thread, saying its pointless cause the military already has craft flying to other civilizations etc. RIP Lumie~
Edit: Just skimmed the news, China has the goal of landing? on the dark side of the Moon by 2018, and Mars by 2020 . . . dunno if that is manned or not. But given its fucking China, throwing a few guys at Mars to die isnt outside of reality.
I dunno, I would be amazing if it is a real thing. Would allow for real space exploration to begin, supply lines to Mars etc to be created, etc etc. Like I said, the guy I asked seemed kind of annoyed about it, so I have never asked again.
I do agree w/ the poster saying follow the $$$, if there has been a surge of $$$$ into the research, someone knows (or there is enough hope to validate dollars) something.
This is also when I truly miss Lumie. He would be all over this thread, saying its pointless cause the military already has craft flying to other civilizations etc. RIP Lumie~
Edit: Just skimmed the news, China has the goal of landing? on the dark side of the Moon by 2018, and Mars by 2020 . . . dunno if that is manned or not. But given its fucking China, throwing a few guys at Mars to die isnt outside of reality.
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iannis
Musty Nester
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How expensive is it really though? The original couldn't have cost more than a machine shop to make. The entire thing is like some bizzaro faraday cage from what little I understand of it. The real cost would be in the equipment it takes to test the thing precisely. Which is why I mention that I'm surprised the companies which already own that sort of equipment aren't using it to test with.
I'm not talking about a R&D on the whole thing. Just an initial feasibility measurement.
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Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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The point I was making though, was if it does actually work (regardless of what they say), and they're 2-5 years ahead of us with this specific tech, that could be a huge deal when talking about the colonization / exploitation of our solar system. Resource / planetary claims and shit. I understand the space fairing countries have all sorts of agreements, but I'd wager that shit will go out the window if china finds itself 5 years ahead of the others.
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Hope this really happens next year.
SpaceX just teased a photo of its highly anticipated Falcon Heavy rocket
A reminder of what a launch may look like:
SpaceX just teased a photo of its highly anticipated Falcon Heavy rocket
A reminder of what a launch may look like:
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