A wonderful article that goes to show reporters won't let a good story get in the way of questioning the sources statements of "fact." Just because the "inventor" says it violates Newtonian mechanics doesn't mean it does. Frankly making such extraordinary claims requires extraordinary proof. Otherwise you come off as a crack pot. The frosty silence: you wasted our time with a toy and then make extraordinary claims to secure our funding/to work for you? A little more evidence is in order.
Enlighten me. What is a reactionless drive ?
- Thread starter weasel fierce
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If you google the inventor you can find the rest of the story. The man was (he is dead now) a pioneer in the field of air cushion trains and maglev trains. He was called a crackpot once before when he proposed that the lifting magnets on a maglev train could be used to generate forward motion through linear induction. Now that Japan and Germany have maglev trains operating on his linear induction principle, it doesn't seem so crazy.
He demonstrated that a large gyroscope too heavy to lift while at rest (50 kg)could be lifted with one hand while spinning and wanted to investigate this strange phenomenon. Apparently he eventually worked out the solution experimentally, solved the problem mathematically, secured a patent based on his work and died without the funds to explore the possible commercial uses. The press made the wild claims and the academy censured his work. He appears to have been a very creative engineer whose work, like that of Robert Goddard, was/is ignored in the land of his birth.
He does not appear to have been a crackpot.
He demonstrated that a large gyroscope too heavy to lift while at rest (50 kg)could be lifted with one hand while spinning and wanted to investigate this strange phenomenon. Apparently he eventually worked out the solution experimentally, solved the problem mathematically, secured a patent based on his work and died without the funds to explore the possible commercial uses. The press made the wild claims and the academy censured his work. He appears to have been a very creative engineer whose work, like that of Robert Goddard, was/is ignored in the land of his birth.
He does not appear to have been a crackpot.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
All too many British inventors have died in poverty. Sooner or later the country will do likewise.
[Holly] The basic of your basic reactionless drive is that it is a drive that is reactionless
[Lister] You don't know, do ya?
[Holly] Not as such, no
That's how I had it work. A ship with grav module M-drive would have almost no thrust outside 100 diameters and be useless in interstellar space. Low tech starships could use a fusion rocket (as shown in Hard Times) but any ship using one would be easy to spot with passive EMS and have a rather unsafe exhaust.
So, even though the reactionless thrust plates cost more and took up more space than these other drives they were worth having in MT.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Actually, if you're outside the gravity well of a body, that's not a bad analogy to the reality described by General Relativity. Unfortunately, the gradients are too small to get you very far in human timescales.
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