Re: starship-design: Zero-Point Momentum

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/31/97 8:09:30 PM, stk@sunherald.infi.net (kyle) wrote:

>Ken Wharton wrote:
>> 
>> Kyle,
>> 
>> I agree that future spaceship designs may work by extracting energy from
>> the vacuum and using that energy to shoot reaction mass out of the ship.
>> Momentum is conserved, and we seem to violating conservation of energy,
>> but that's okay because there's zero-point energy we're tapping.
>> 
>> However, these proposals of yours (#1, #2, and #3) seem to imply that we
>> can violate conservation of momentum as well, by pulling momentum out of
>> the ZPE??  Remember, as far as the ZPE theory does, there is no zero-
>> point momentum.  If you extract momentum from vacuum, does that mean you
>> accelerate space in the opposite direction?  This is highly speculative
>> (orders of magnitude more so than ZPE, to use a comparison).  If we can
>> tap the ZPE it's much more likely we'll do it on a energy, rather than a
>> momentum basis.
>
>I can't take credit for 1 2 and 3. They were NASA's ideas.

Actually none of them are NASA ideas.  They are theries NASA wants to get
someone else to research.  You might for example be able to cancel out
innertia, side step the concervation of mementum laws (hey we did it with the
concervation of mass and energy laws), and lots of other highly usefull
future phisics trick.  But we don't know if any of that is possible, much
less practical.  Doing these trickcs could make our little power and cost
problems look laughable in contrast.


>> Well, okay, so maybe I've written an entire science fiction novel based
>> on space-time inertia, but that doesn't mean I believe it...

Which one?

>> >> All the NASA work I've seen on these basically says that none of them
>> >> are useful for spacecraft engineering at this time, even the ones that
>> >> aren't in violent contradiction with known physics.
>> >
>> >I generally agree, but still say we should work on them.
>> 
>> Again, this group CAN'T work on them.  If you have the resources to do
>> so, we'll be more than happy to take your experimental results into
>> account.  But what these ideas are really going to need is a better
>> understanding of the fundamental physics, and although anyone can come up
>> with a theory, I think the only ones that this group can (in good
>> conscience) take into account are ones that are plausible enough to be
>> published in a peer-reviewed scientific Journal.  (In which some rather
>> far-out ideas are regularly voiced, believe it or not...)  
>
>They actually were published in a NASA journal, and so was Alcubierre's
>theory. If no one here will speculate on this, can you tell me where I
>can find a group that will?

They were publish as speculations in NASA and space related publications.
 Buyt we havent a clue on how or if they would work.

>> I sincerely hope you will work toward a degree in physics and publicly
contribute
>to
>> this ever-evolving field.  I have no doubt that it will be someone like
>> you who makes the next major breakthrough in our fundamental
>> understanding of the universe.

Agreed, and when you make the breakthrough (and I've no doubt someone will)
then we can speculate on how those breakthrough can be integrated into a
functioning system.  Until then we can talk about how neat it would be (and
do) but not much more.

>Thank You
>
>Kyle Mcallister


Kelly