Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

China's Radical New Space Drive

Posted by samzenpus on from the learning-to-fly dept.

First time accepted submitter Noctis-Kaban writes "Scientists in China have built and tested a radical new space drive. Although the thrust it produces may not be enough to lift your mobile phone, it looks like it could radically change the satellite industry. Satellites are just the start: with superconducting components, this technology could generate the thrust to drive everything from deep space probes to flying cars. And it all started with a British engineer whose invention was ignored and ridiculed in his home country."

1 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Primitive and woefully inadequate by qbitslayer · · Score: -1, Troll

    Anybody who thinks we are going to colonize the solar system, let alone the star systems beyond, with a bunch of cockamamie rockets is out to lunch. The idea that space propulsion is best done in a vehicle that moves forward by throwing things out the back is primitive to the extreme. Reactive propulsion precedes Newton and even Ptolemy. It's pathetic, really.

    But do not let the preceding get you down because a new and fabulous era of space travel is about to be born. Soon, physicists will wake up from their stupor and realize that their understanding of motion is fundamentally flawed. We are on the verge of a breakthrough in physics that will make almost every current approach to energy production and transportation obsolete. It is based on a new analysis of the causality of motion. Essentially, Aristotle was right to insist that motion is caused. As a result, we are swimming in an immense lattice of energetic particles, an ocean of clean energy, lots and lots of free energy. Soon, we will understand enough about the lattice to exploit it for energy production and propulsion. Our future vehicles will move at tremendous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring damages due to inertial effects. Floating sky cities impervious to earthquakes, tsunamis and bad weather, unlimited clean energy, earth to Mars in hours, New York to Beijing in minutes... That's the future of energy and travel. It will happen in your lifetime.

    Physics: The Problem With Motion. You don't understand motion even if you think you do.