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starship-design: Zero-Point Momentum




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.

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...

>> 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...)  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.

Ken