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FARTRRRR-R-R-R

Fast Accelerated Reactionless Travel Reactor - R - R - R
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It is a machine which accelerates masses gently to very high speeds and then decelerates them suddenly. This sudden braking of masses causes them to emit gravity waves, and thus without any visible or measurable effluent this device provides a thrust in a certain direction.

This is not the popular mumbo jumbo deen dirve or artrrr "reactionless drive"! The reaction exists, only it is radiated away as gravity waves and therefore is not perceptible to instruments devised by us ignorant men. And women, too, I may add, lest I be branded a male chauvinist by the gentler halfbakers among us.

The equipment consists of a long tube of nonconducting ceramic, which is interspersed with rings of conducting metal. It would look like this ==#==#==#==#==#== where == indicate the ceramic sections and # indicates the metallic sections. This long tube is evacuated, and fitted with a source of metallic ions at one end and a tungsten target at the other.

Calcium or magnesium in a crucible gets heated by a tungsten heater and evaporates. This crucible is kept positively charged. In the evacuated space, the electrons in the outer shell of those metallic atoms are attracted by, and fly away to, the crucible leaving the heavier ions behind. Each of the metal rings # are at a progressively higher negative potential difference with respect to the crucible in order to achieve this.

Due to the successive differences in potential between the metal sections which are suitably shaped so as to focus the beam of ions onward along the axis of the tube, these ions get accelerated to very high energy and so possess considerable momentum. Several millions of volts are needed for this, and may conveniently be obtained by suitably trained cats rubbing their fur on cunningly arranged charge collecting electrodes disguised as trouser legs. Or something.

When these ions finally reach the tungsten plug inserted into the tube at the other end they smack splat into it and depending on the angle of the face they decelerate in virtually no time at all. Since these ions are charged and they are decelerated they emit radiation - electromagnetic waves, of the wavelength determined by the tungsten target, and the energy of the ion, and the mass and composition and isotopic distribution among the ion stream, and et cetera.

A real small fraction of this energy gets radiated away as gravity waves, and it can be measured as an imbalance in the momentum of the ions hitting the target, and the total momentum (which should sum up and be equal and opposite) of the rebounding products and the radiation. The charge number of the ion, ie, the number of protons in the nucleus, and the mass number, ie, the number of protons + the number of neutrons, and the isotopic distribution, all have a bearing on the degree of thrust produced. It is proved that the sign of this thrust depends on the mass number and the isotopic distribution as in the <link> and thus more experiment is needed to improve the purity of the ion source and its homogeniety.

Get a sufficient number of these on a spacecraft, and it can move without jettisoning matter.

Feeding all those cats, and training them to do what they have to do - THAT is the real problem.

neelandan, Mar 15 2011

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       you pull the material in one direction then it hits a wall? sounds pretty reaction less to me. gravity waves be damned.
WcW, Mar 15 2011
  

       Bloody hell, [neelandan]!   

       You've just explained why CRTs are becoming scarcer - they're all drifting away.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2011
  

       Um, which direction would it move in?
pocmloc, Mar 15 2011
  

       Perhaps that's the question we should have asked initially. If the movement was at right angles to all known dimensions, this would explain why the effect is not easily detected.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2011
  

       Well, of course, the The acronym FARTRR-R-R-R was created so that it could be used, like LASER, to become the name for any device that incorporates the operating principle specified in the source-phrase. --IF there actually is anything "to" that operating principle, of course! In pronunciation -- should it ever be worth pronouncing, of course -- it most simply can rhyme with "farter" - that involuntary release of gases from the large interstine, accompanied by a raucous musical noise and a sulphurous stench.   

       Ordinary Newtonian Physics, so, physicists, please derive its Equation of Motion before denouncing this essay. To continue: *IF* the Reaction vector gets out-of-phase at all, relative to the Action vector, then MAYBE we will be lucky enough to see a couple of degrees (from the 30-minute mark to the 29-minute mark on a clock face is more than that: six degrees). Still, ANY degree of out-of-phase activity means that SOME overall unidirectional motion should become possible. The results of those old ignored equations depend on the frequency of the applied forces -- 2 cycles per second is trivial, but a hundred thousand Hertz might Rotate Reaction on the clock face from the 6 almost to the 3! That's a phase angle of almost ninety degrees. Please note that those old equations say that a ninety-degree phase angle is actually an unattainable limit -- kind of like trying to reach the speed of light.
neelandan, Mar 16 2011
  

       Forgive me FARTRRRR-R-R-R for I have sinned in the confessional.
rcarty, Mar 16 2011
  

       "but a hundred thousand Hertz might Rotate Reaction" or maybe not. kinda like how "maybe" if i try to rev my Honda engine to 18000rpm there might be a window where it makes gobs of power. Sadly it breaks every time, but if I COULD demonstrate it MAYBE it MIGHT be true even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.
WcW, Mar 16 2011
  

       I heard MHz and GHz bandied about somewhere; won't work: that kind of frequency will just heat the contact point(s)... might work in He-II... dunno what you're going to use to excite it with though.
FlyingToaster, Mar 16 2011
  

       I'm trying to answer this question:   

       If I take a proton (hydrogen nucleus), and accelerate it over a distance of 10 meters with a total accleration potential of ten million volts, and then decelerate it over the distance of the diameter of one tungsten atom, what will be the magnitude and direction of the net reactionless force?   

       If there isn't an answer to this equation, then I am bullshitting prodigiously and am a fraud, my depends overflows and the stench is prodigious.
neelandan, Mar 17 2011
  

       This is teh greatest idea ever. Well done, neelandan
Wayne Scotting, Mar 28 2011
  
      
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