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Saw this.
TBH, I'm a little sceptically now. On mature reflection, it seems that the test rig they expected to generate thrust, did so. While the control they expected not to generate thrust, also did so. There's something suspicious about that.... which suggests to me that, while they might've found an 'effect' we won't know what that exactly is until it's taken up to space.
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Actually, the recent experiments made me more skeptical than I was before -- seeing similar behavior in the control is not a good sign. It would be awesome if it works though. If it shows any more positive results in ground-based tests, it might be worth the few million dollars to test it in space.
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Ion drives don't eject reaction mass, but they do eject energy. Is this another case of the same thing?
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Ion rocket thrust
08-03-2014, 05:11 AM
Ion rockets have a reaction mass that is exhausted at very high velocity from the thruster. These ions are made from gas stored in an on board fuel tank. The gas is usually one of the inert noble gases such as xenon
hdm
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Dartz Wrote:Saw this.
TBH, I'm a little sceptically now. On mature reflection, it seems that the test rig they expected to generate thrust, did so. While the control they expected not to generate thrust, also did so. There's something suspicious about that.... which suggests to me that, while they might've found an 'effect' we won't know what that exactly is until it's taken up to space.
More groundbased tests before it goes into space, much cheaper and easier to investigate. Also in the paper they suspect that the force generated by the control was due to the sheer amount of power running it through the test rig would act like an electromagnet and have some attraction. Notably the test created a lot more thrust than the control.
I am somewhat skeptical still even though a chinese team and NASA both have replicated it their findings are way off from each other so... Still worth following up on just because if it works it'd be insanly valuable.
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![[Image: quantum_vacuum_virtual_plasma.png]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/quantum_vacuum_virtual_plasma.png)