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[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Discuss these things here.



Rules: If you have a theory, you must post enough testable data to allow others to test your claims. Only civil discussion is allowed. No insults, doxxing, fighting, or killing.

[x2yzh9]

So, as someone who has little to no practical technical knowledge of physics and stuff and more of a broad conceptual understanding, I find testable data to be the hard part to this discussion. However, I'll do my best:
So, for instance, on Lockheed Martin's website they have a page devoted to compact fusion. To quote a fragment on their site it is "our engineers are looking to the biggest natural fusion reactor for inspiration – the sun. By containing the power of the sun in a small magnetic bottle,". This falls in line with what I think. You would have to recreate a atomic reaction to produce the same forces that would be necessary for a propulsions system. We see fusion in the stars, so we have to take that as a foundation, and not some attempt at a 'shortcut'. To put it in simpler terms, it takes astronomical amounts of efficiency to get the energy, components within range of something we can produce. To scale it out is to say even if we are to produce a minute percentage of the suns power in a fusion reaction, we would have to have a corresponding percentage of reactants, or energy, or what have you to initiate the reaction. This is also to say that anything manmade trying to imitate this atomic process would have to follow the same rules of thumb, ie. how we detail the process and circumstances needed for the reaction as we see it in the universe happening.. Once again, an example here is stars and their fusion processes.

   So, if you take all of that-The fundamentals of that and 'hypothetically' apply it to other reactions you have a logical conclusion: We simply do not logically have the money to buy the things we would need to become a space-faring species, unless a global undertaking was put in place to collect them. But, I digress, this could be applied to thing like darkmatter and antimatter, but I'm not sure how. If you want to talk about warp drives, well, you would first have to find something in the universe that has a warping effect..ie. a wormhole or an anomaly, and then reproduce that effect. The only thing I could post the most erm, data on is fusion. And that's merely saying what we know, a lot of the knowledge if any is probably recent..

[LoSboccacc]

even if fusion worked, and compact fusion was feasible, you'd need a reaction mass to propel yourself forward.

that's why, if proved true, quantum vacuum thrusters are such a big deal

[MarcAFK]

I've seen a lot of junk science talking about various nonsense involving dark matter as if it's some exotic particle that might completely overturn physics. Many of these are about teleportation, time travel, exotic propulsion etc.
However dark matter represents matter we haven't yet seen that appears to be slowing the expansion of the universe. Astronomers recently did a survey where so many black holes were discovered that it would account for all the missing mass, take that exotic "dark matter" proponents.
Dank matter on the other hand will fuel societal developments well into the new century, and I for one welcome our new probot overlewds.

[Neonivek]

Controversial propulsion systems?

The only one I can think of was the Nuclear powered rocket ship.

[MarcAFK]

Controversial propulsion systems?

The only one I can think of was the Nuclear powered rocket ship.

Project Orion, getting to orbit, 1% higher global cancer rate at a time.

[Putnam]

I've seen a lot of junk science talking about various nonsense involving dark matter as if it's some exotic particle that might completely overturn physics. Many of these are about teleportation, time travel, exotic propulsion etc.
However dark matter represents matter we haven't yet seen that appears to be slowing the expansion of the universe. Astronomers recently did a survey where so many black holes were discovered that it would account for all the missing mass, take that exotic "dark matter" proponents.

1. The expansion of the universe is accelerating. Dark matter accounts for the shape and behavior of galaxies, not the expansion of the universe.

2. While the black hole findings did give credence to MACHOs, there's still way too much dark matter for MACHOs to be the only dark matter AFAIK. WIMPs are still likely. They need not be exotic; in fact, by necessity if there are WIMPs they have mass and don't do anything electromagnetically, so no reaction propulsion.

[Orange Wizard]

Controversial propulsion systems?

The only one I can think of was the Nuclear powered rocket ship.

It wasn't nuclear powered, it used a fission reactor to superheat hydrogen. Why is that controversial, you ask? Fuck if I know.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Controversial propulsion systems?

The only one I can think of was the Nuclear powered rocket ship.

Project Orion, getting to orbit, 1% higher global cancer rate at a time.

I know Wiki has a page describing Project Orion, but it cannot be linked to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion [weird]

[Orange Wizard]

[MarcAFK]

Orion is the rocket with a massive thick shield under it, you drop nuclear weapons from a vending machine developed by cocoa cola. The bombs push the rocket into space. Very heavy payloads and high mass fraction are possible but there's a slight matter of fallout.

[Orange Wizard]

No, I linked the article in the

Thusly

[BFEL]

Power source/fusion/etc. snip

Well the fastest way to get around the "needing buttload of matter/energy to start fusion reaction with" thing is with Antimatter Initiated Fusion. Which I know about from KSP so I'm not sure how far along the theories/applications on that are.

Also from KSP, and more specifically Scott Manley, full on Antimatter Reactors are apparently already a theoretical possibility [citation needed] but the main problem of which is releasing like THE WORST form of radiation. I believe it was neutron radiation, that basically penetrates everything ever.
Though I DO have something of a theory on this front.
Specifically, to my knowledge radiation tends to be a form of light, and thus have a wavelength, so you basically just apply destructive interference (think noise cancelling headphones) and bam, radiation contained, antimatter reactor is now a thing, world power issues solved.

[uber pye]

The EM drive

basically you got a box that you shoot microwaves into a highly reflective box that they bounce around in and it make tiny tiny amounts of thrust. The only problem is that it violates the Conservation of momentum, and Newton's Third Law, but it at least seems to work in testing.

[TheDarkStar]

Power source/fusion/etc. snip

Well the fastest way to get around the "needing buttload of matter/energy to start fusion reaction with" thing is with Antimatter Initiated Fusion. Which I know about from KSP so I'm not sure how far along the theories/applications on that are.

Also from KSP, and more specifically Scott Manley, full on Antimatter Reactors are apparently already a theoretical possibility [citation needed] but the main problem of which is releasing like THE WORST form of radiation. I believe it was neutron radiation, that basically penetrates everything ever.
Though I DO have something of a theory on this front.
Specifically, to my knowledge radiation tends to be a form of light, and thus have a wavelength, so you basically just apply destructive interference (think noise cancelling headphones) and bam, radiation contained, antimatter reactor is now a thing, world power issues solved.

Antimatter-matter reactions do release high-energy and highly-penetrating gamma radiation, but it's the least dangerous form because it goes through things so well. A high enough dose will kill you anyway, but (unlike neutron, alpha, or gamma radiation) it's not going to cause as much damage. In addition, you can still block most of it with a few feet of lead or some other dense material.

Blocking x-rays/gamma radiation through destructive interference is an interesting idea. At first I thought it wouldn't work because they move at the speed of light and so any communication to some other radiation generator would be slower, but then I realized that photons move slower when going though a medium so it might work. However, if you have enough dense material to slow the radiation for long enough to create other radiation that stops it, then you've probably reduced it to safe levels already. Also, anything other than perfectly recreating an inverted signal would also constructive interference in some places, which would make things worse.

All of this is not really the most dangerous part of matter-antimatter reactions. The main problem is that matter and antimatter will spontaneously react without any activation energy. Unlike fossil fuels, antimatter is difficult to store and is never "inert". Unlike nuclear fuels, any amount is reactive. If even a small fraction of a gram releases containment (a quick calculation tells me that ~2.33 x 10^-11 kg of antimatter will react with matter to release the energy of one kg of TNT), then it destroys the rest of your containment, your reactor, and everything around it.