Do all space engines need fuel?

[kojikun]

Well I never said that I knew everything about NegMat drives. But the math DOES work. Negative matter has negative mass. its negative mass negates the mass of the ship and makes the system mass equal zero. No mass means no energy required to move. It also means no speed limits.

But heres another idea:

We usually think of wormholes as being gates that we open, go through, and thats it. But why? If we can open and move wormholes about as we want, we would have no use for newtonian drives. We would simply open the wormhole and move the mouth of the wormhole so the ship is now in it. Then bam, youre somewhere else, without using newtonian drives.

[Warspite]

Would you mind explain what is negative matter? I see everybody saying that it's maater, but negative, and it repels normal matter... WHAT IS MATTER? You people are jumping on this negative matter band wagon too soon. It works in math? Great! Hell, manifolds work in math too, but I don't see any type of pratival uses for it, and they are one weird thing... Just don't explain how it works, and move along!

[Wicked Pilot]

You might want to look up Robert Forward's paper on negmatter drives before dismissing them quite so quickly.

Do be so quick to support the fringe if you don't understand the basics.

[Enlightenment]

Do be so quick to support the fringe if you don't understand the basics.

http://www.whidbey.com/forward/TechPubs.html

Fringe nuts generally aren't published in peer-reviewed journals.

[kojikun]

negative matter is about as fringe sciencey as wormholes are. theres no free energy shit or anything similarly crackpotish. its pure unadulterated theoretical physics.

[kojikun]

and warspite, as i explained earlier, negative matter is matter which has negative mass and energy. you speed it up and it looses energy, slow it down and it gains energy. this is why the equations work:

look, if you have 10 kg of matter and -10 kg negative matter both moving at say 10m/s >>

(10e2 - 10e2)/2 = 0 Joules

The equations balance and the laws of physics aren't broken. e=mc^2 works too

(10 * 9e16 + (-10) * 9e16) = 0 Joules.

No problems.

[Warspite]

Do be so quick to support the fringe if you don't understand the basics.

http://www.whidbey.com/forward/TechPubs.html

Fringe nuts generally aren't published in peer-reviewed journals.

Yeah, you're right... I have been checking out it's publications. Hell, anything published on a Physics Journal can be considered fringe, most of it is pure abstraction and in no way falsifiable, yet.

I have a few quibbles with his negative matter explanations, but the most evident remark is:

Although negative rest mass energy, negative kinetic energy, and negative matter are not standard concepts in Newtonian mechanics, they do not immediately seem to lead to obvious logocal contradictions. At the very leastm they have enough logical validity that they can be used in writing science fiction, or in speculating on possible future "breakthroughs" in advanced propulsion physics.

(http://www.whidbey.com/forward/pdf/tp091.pdf)

Now, this is all fringe science to me! He has everything well thought out, and explains it in detail on the paper, I have to admit that, but it's all just a plot device to bypass the normal problems of STL travel.



Also, he defends ZPE and the Casimir Effect, and THAT's fringe! in the following document, he proposes a cyclic Casimir machine, but reaches to the conclusion that something might be wrong due to the violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics.

... Using the accepted theories and models for the behaviour of the Casimir cavities under the influence of the quantum mechanical electromagnetic fluctuations of the vaccum, I have described a method of manipulating the shape of a Casimir cavity in a cyclical manner, so that I can extract either electrical or mechanical energy from tje forces acting on the walls of the Casimir cavity, while at the same time periodically returning the Casimir cavity to it's original state. Since this procedure would generate more energy than it uses, it is highly probable that something is wrong. The most likely candidate is that the Casimir forces on the individual walls of a cavity with zero total energy are not zero. But i know of no reference to this. There may be other explanations.

http://www.whidbey.com/forward/pdf/tp132.pdf

Oh, well... I guess we have to find another way... Let me finish this small nitpick, just by saying that the quantum world is a fascinating place, with remarkable possibilities, but there's a distinct difference between the microworld and the macroworld. Things that work for the small, usually don't work for the large. The Casimir effect may work (and THAT it's still debatable!), but unless we get far more than we put in, it's not worth it.
From an engineer point of view, it would be a big monster, powered by another big monster, just to provide enough power to Mankind, and if we have the initial monster to power it up, why build it?

Anyway, adding to the propulsion tech: how about if there would be some way to circumvent relativistic laws by altering the underlying mathematical basis? Either by discovering, or developing, a whole new mathematical metric system.

[Wicked Pilot]

Do be so quick to support the fringe if you don't understand the basics.

http://www.whidbey.com/forward/TechPubs.html

Fringe nuts generally aren't published in peer-reviewed journals.

I'm talking about you. Your posting a link as opposed to writing about how the math does add up is suggesting that you don't understand the subject at hand. Robert Forward can come here and debate his findings if he likes, but unless he does, you need to enlighten us yourself, not simply post a link.

I hope you don't take this as an insult or malice, but it's important that you do the work yourself, of you will make yourself look like those Trekkies that spout bullshit about quantom mechanics when they don't understand the difference between energy and power.

[Warspite]

My problem with it is in the concept itself:
How do we create negative matter?
Of course, the mathematics are pretty simple, since it's all the same, but with a reversed signal, but how do we make it?
And don't anybody spout technobabble, there's enough around here already!

[Wicked Pilot]

Of course, the mathematics are pretty simple,

Not really, compare what happens when you square two, and when you square negative two. Then compare what happens when you take the square root of two, and when you take the square root of negative two. I hope you see where I'm going.

[Warspite]

Of course, the mathematics are pretty simple,

Not really, compare what happens when you square two, and when you square negative two. Then compare what happens when you take the square root of two, and when you take the square root of negative two. I hope you see where I'm going.

I see your point, but what I meant was, the demonstration based on linear equations (momentum, for example) are pretty simple: (+Mv) + (-Mv) = 0. Duh!
Of course, going beyond linear expressions, we can fall into the traps of imaginary numbers, and they are only of help in the mathematical realm.

[Wicked Pilot]

I see your point, but what I meant was, the demonstration based on linear equations (momentum, for example) are pretty simple: (+Mv) + (-Mv) = 0. Duh!
Of course, going beyond linear expressions, we can fall into the traps of imaginary numbers, and they are only of help in the mathematical realm.

Believe me, the deeper into Physics that you go, the more dicier the math gets. Just turning a positive into a negative sends shit flying all over the place.

As an example, try the equation for relativistic momentum:

p=(mu)/((1-(u^2)/(c^2))^(1/2))

Look what happens to your negatives

[SyntaxVorlon]

This may suprise you so hold on to your ass..
Now I know what you're say, something like "Wicked Pilot is full of shit, but then again, he usually is right, and handsome at that." Let me explain, and this is somewhat obvious, the concept of gravational assist. Yep that's right, the method that sent the Pioneers, the Voyagers, and Galileo into the outer solar system. The starships literally steal energy away from the planets they get their assist from. Think of what happens if you grabb onto a spinning merry-go-round, and then letting go. You basically get shot off, just like a spacecraft getting shot out of the orbit of a planet. Large bodies like Jupiter can shoot a spaceprobe across the solar system. Of course, a planet like Jupiter will lose so much energy in the proces that after thousands and thousands of years, it will have traveled one centemeter less around its orbit.

Hate to burst your bubble, but this only works with some form of fuel to position the craft in parking orbit or beyond, in order to reach excape velocity, even in orbit, you need to get velocity. You can steal energy but there is such a small amount of momentum gained that it would be faster and cheaper to use fuel. It's taken some 30 years and Voyager is only a few hundred billion miles away, pretty damn slow by intersteller, even interplanetary, standards. Ion drives could probably get you faster, using the same system of gravity stealing. But in order to send a peopled mission you'ld have to send a large craft and gravity is THE weakest force in the universe, a large enough ship would not benefit much by this use of gravity.

[Warspite]

Believe me, the deeper into Physics that you go, the more dicier the math gets. Just turning a positive into a negative sends shit flying all over the place.

As an example, try the equation for relativistic momentum:

p=(mu)/((1-(u^2)/(c^2))^(1/2))

Look what happens to your negatives

I think we're on the same flight level.
I tottaly agree with you. My point is that, it's easy to fall into the trap of negative matter, just by using linear expressions to explain it. Math or physics aside, my main problem is from an engineering point of view: how to make this stuff and keep it. But I don't think Dr. Ronald has explained that...

I don't like the concept. It's too... negative.

[Crown]

I don't like the concept. It's too... negative.

Okay is this just me, or did anyone else find this incredably funny?

[Wicked Pilot]

Hate to burst your bubble, but this only works with some form of fuel to position the craft in parking orbit or beyond, in order to reach excape velocity, even in orbit, you need to get velocity.

Thank you newbie for pointing that out to us. Do you think that just maybe I didn't mention that because I thought most people on the board would already understand the obvious? This ain't Spacebattles you know.

You can steal energy but there is such a small amount of momentum gained that it would be faster and cheaper to use fuel.

Now you're talking out your ass. Go ask someone on the Galileo team if it would have been more cost effective or easier to simply add more fuel to the probe. I'm interested to hear what they say to you.

using the same system of gravity stealing.

What the fuck is gravity stealing? How does one steal gravity? Do you understand how gravitational assist works?

But in order to send a peopled mission you'ld have to send a large craft and gravity is THE weakest force in the universe, a large enough ship would not benefit much by this use of gravity.

The mass of the ship is inconsequencial compared to the mass of a planet. Size of the starship can be neglected in this instance.

[NecronLord]

You can steal energy but there is such a small amount of momentum gained that it would be faster and cheaper to use fuel.

Now you're talking out your ass. Go ask someone on the Galileo team if it would have been more cost effective or easier to simply add more fuel to the probe. I'm interested to hear what they say to you.

[Spock, STVI]I believe their response would be... "Build us a fucking skyhook then genius, then we'll put lots of extra stuff on it mova-fucker"[/spock, STVI]

The only problem with gravity assist is that it is not technically a drive system. (and that you have to know where you are going, and it is kinda slow)