V,
I'll try this again. In my previous post in the other thread, I made a few
points relating to some things being argued, but as is usual, there was no
response to what I said whatsoever, save one private message effectively
calling me a racist for posting a link to the (I thought) humorous video of the
'Chinese factory worker.'
1. About the claims that the thrust of the device varies with its velocity...
this has at least /some/ theoretical merit. A reactionless propulsion system
operating without a preferred frame of reference quickly becomes a means to
violate conservation of energy. You can draw this out fairly easily. Two
relative frames, one moving rapidly WRT an accelerating projectile, one moving
not so rapidly WRT it. If you force the projectile to expel some reaction mass,
the kinetic energy of the system is conserved in all reference frames. If
however, the thing just spontaneously accelerates, it is not conserved in all
frames of reference. UNLESS... we say one particular frame is 'special.' Then
you can have things work... but the thrust relative to this frame is relative
depending on how fast our hypothetical reactionless engine is moving relative
to it. Get close to C, and it seems to drop off in efficiency very quickly. Any
experiment report indicating that the
thing's thrust is different in different directions, or varies depending on
some (possibly absolute) velocity is very interesting.
2. An alternative possibility, which I sometimes wonder about, is to consider
space itself (whatever space IS) as reaction mass. Can you 'dump' energy into
it to satisfy kE in all frames? Can you set a 'piece of space' in motion equal
and oppositely to yourself to satisfy both conservation of energy, and
conservation of momentum? If so, why can't you reverse the process, and take
back some of the energy you put into 'space' to move yourself relative to it?
3. If you consider space to be your reaction mass, what is the numerical value
of said mass? The books say, zero. Well... assume we can thrust against it.
What is it then? Infinity? That gets us into trouble. Is it equal to the mass
of whatever is being accelerated 'against' it? Or is there a coupling constant
to deal with here, depending on how much... lets call it 'space friction' we
are able to conjure up.
4. A nice place to start thinking about this sort of thing is the comparison
between a rocket, carrying all its reaction mass with it, and a car driving
down a road. The car is 'expelling' reaction mass, yes. But it isn't obvious at
first glance. Neither is the 'reaction mass' likely to be obvious in a
'reactionless' engine.
5. Assuming one tries to extend the Lorentz equations (SR here, not getting
into GR, don't know enough of that) to luminal and superluminal velocity
realms, things get very strange looking. Light cones (those dumb things that
people put a bunch of dumb labels on to confuse you) get f****d up looking,
coordinates go to imaginary values (what is an imaginary meter? An imaginary
second?), etc. Are we now in some other realm of space and time?
6. The same thing happens in the Schwarzschild solution to a black hole, inside
the event horizon. From a 'stationary' observer, coordinates inside go
imaginary. From a free-fall perspective, they are normal. Think about that.
I'll leave this here and see if I get any response at all.
--Kyle
