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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