TECH Next-Gen Propulsion System Gets $67 Million from NASA

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.space.com/32692-solar-electric-propulsion-asteroid-mars.html

Next-Gen Propulsion System Gets $67 Million from NASA

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | April 26, 2016 07:09am ET

The next-generation engines that NASA is counting on to power missions to an asteroid and Mars will begin taking shape soon.

The space agency has awarded California-based company Aerojet Rocketdyne a $67 million, 36-month contract to design, build and test an advanced, superefficient solar electric propulsion (SEP) system. These new engines should have a profound impact on the future of spaceflight, NASA officials said.


"We basically are building a new drive train that enables whole new platforms for deep-space exploration," Bryan Smith, director of the Space Flight Systems Directorate at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, said during a news briefing Thursday (April 21). [Electric Vehicles to Explore Deep Space (Photo Gallery)]

SEP systems convert solar power to electricity, then use this electricity to accelerate ions out of a nozzle, generating thrust. Engineers have been developing SEP technology for more than half a century, and such ion thrusters have been used on multiple spacecraft over the years, including NASA's Dawn probe, which is currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres.

SEP engines are much more efficient than traditional chemical rockets, requiring less fuel to travel a given distance. However, ion engines generate less thrust than standard rockets do, so it generally takes SEP-powered craft quite a bit longer to get from Point A to Point B in space.

NASA said it wants Aerojet Rocketdyne to give ion engines more oomph, up to twice the thrust capacity of currently available SEP systems. The agency plans to use the advanced ion engines on a variety of missions, including its project to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and drag the piece into orbit around the moon. There, astronauts will visit the rock.

The more powerful SEP system should also aid NASA's plan to put boots on Mars by the end of the 2030s, agency officials said. Such engines would still be too slow for crewed Red Planet missions (which would likely employ traditional, chemical propulsion), but they would allow cheaper and more efficient transport of the large amounts of cargo and infrastructure required to support astronauts, Smith said.

SEP systems "allow you to either step down in launch-vehicle class, or increase cargo," he said.

NASA aims to launch the robotic asteroid-capture probe by 2020 or 2021. The new SEP system should be ready to go by then, if all goes according to plan, agency officials have said. (The astronaut visit to the redirected boulder, using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, will occur in 2025 or 2026.)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

 

[tanstaafl]

The agency plans to use the advanced ion engines on a variety of missions, including its project to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and drag the piece into orbit around the moon. There, astronauts will visit the rock.

Yeah, good luck with that! I'd probably die of the shock if the US makes it back to the Moon in what remains of my lifetime.

 

[Housecarl]

Yeah, good luck with that! I'd probably die of the shock if the US makes it back to the Moon in what remains of my lifetime.

Part of the problem of going regularly and staying on the Moon, never mind Mars, is where the Sun is in its activity cycle, particularly if you're looking to doing it without high thrust long endurance propulsion.

 

[tanstaafl]

Well, they did make the point that it would be used on missions where time wasn't the most important consideration. Not to mention that Star Trek's Enterprise maneuvering thrusters were ion engines, weren't they? Somewhere along the lines there ought to be an ion engine with refueling capabilities ... add some nanobots and micro-industrial capabilities and you'd be on your way to Fred Saberhagen's machine civilization!

 

[FaithfulSkeptic]

Isn't the thrust of these things less than you get taking a leak ?

 

[Housecarl]

Isn't the thrust of these things less than you get taking a leak ?

Yeah. But it's constant so the velocity builds up over time pretty significantly.

 

[night driver]

heinlein did the calculations on constant thrust engines in both his "Expanded Universe " books. The calculations don't get "interesting" until about Day 6. By Week 4 you are damn close to lightspeed IIRC. Mars (EVEN ALLOWING DECEL) was under 2 weeks IIRC.

 

[alchemike]

$67 Million is like a piss...

o)<

mike

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...physics-but-a-nasa-test-says-it-works-anyway/

This rocket engine breaks a law of physics. But a NASA test says it works anyway.

By Sarah Kaplan November 22 at 3:23 PM

NASA scientists have been daydreaming about a new kind of rocket engine that could carry astronauts to Mars in 70 days without burning any fuel. Now, in a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Propulsion and Power, they say that it might really work.

The paper, written by astrophysicists at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories, tested a electromagnetic propulsion system, or “EM drive,” that generates a small amount of thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around a cone-shaped copper chamber. No propellant goes in, no exhaust comes out, and yet, somehow, the engine can make things move.

If you think that news sounds too good to be true, you've got good instincts — it just might be. This “impossible” fuel-less engine appears to violate one of the fundamental laws of physics.

Say what?

Hark back to your high school science classroom. Avert your eyes from the unfortunate hair styles and acne, if necessary, and try to focus on what's written on the blackboard: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That's Newton's third law of motion. It's the principle that explains why pushing against a wall will send an ice skater zooming in the opposite direction. It also explains how jet engines work: As hot gases are expelled out the back of the plane, they produce a thrusting force that moves the plane forward.

But the EM drive doesn't work that way. Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield.

[Destination Unknown: Where might NASA go next?]

And that works?

According to the new paper, yes. The Eagleworks scientists report that their machine generated 1.2 millinewtons of thrust per kilowatt of electricity pumped in. (That electricity could come from solar panels in a hypothetical spaceship.) That's a fraction of thrust produced by the lightweight ion drives now used in many NASA spacecraft, National Geographic noted, but it's a lot more than the few micronewtons per kilowatt produced by light sails, a proven technology that generates thrust using radiation from the sun.

Where did this idea come from?

The idea for an EM drive was first published a decade ago by British engineer Roger Shawyer. He argued that the drive isn't really “reactionless” — instead, he argued, the thrust comes from radiation pressure. Microwaves inside the cavity create an imbalance of radiation that pushes against the walls and generates thrust.

The idea was hyped in headlines and splashed across the cover of New Scientist magazine, but most scientists were, and still are, extremely skeptical. There's no theoretical explanation for how such an engine might work, and not all the possible sources of experimental error have been eliminated.

[We really need to figure out how to stop a killer asteroid, scientists say]

A team of scientists at China's Northwestern Polytechnical University have been working to build their own EM drive, but their one positive result turned out to be a measurement error, according to the Christian Science Monitor. In 2014, independent inventor and chemical engineer Guido Fetta got the scientists at Eagleworks to evaluate his variation on the EM drive, which he calls Cannae. They concluded that it did produce a small amount of thrust, but didn't speculate on what that might mean or what mysterious new laws of physics could have produced it. Fetta says he now wants to test the drive in space, according to Popular Mechanics.

NASA has been uncharacteristically restrained about this whole project. When asked about the Eagleworks experiments last year, the space agency told Space.com, “While conceptual research into novel propulsion methods by a team at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston has created headlines, this is a small effort that has not yet shown any tangible results. NASA is not working on 'warp drive' technology.”

What does this new paper really mean?

The new finding does lend some credence to EM drive claims. It passed peer review, which means that several expert scientists reviewed the methodology and the results and found no major flaws. It also addressed one of the major knocks against past EM drive tests — that the engines heat up when activated, suggesting that hot air around the machines, rather than the photons inside them, might be what generates thrust. The Eagleworks scientists made sure this wasn't the case by conducting their test in a vacuum.

This doesn't mean that the Eagleworks EM drive definitely functions. Peer review is designed to make sure that studies are well designed and executed, and that the conclusions are reasonable — it's not an endorsement. And plenty of findings published in solid scientific papers have later been found to be incomplete or incorrect. That's how science is supposed to work: You draw conclusions based on the best evidence available, present them to your peers, and revise and refine as you conduct more tests and gather more data. The authors of the paper list nine possible sources of error in their experiment, and indicate that they need to do more tests to try to rule those out.

[Why NASA still believes we might find life on Mars]

“The issue involved here is whether the experiment is seeing something real or not,” Jim Woodward, a physicist at California State at Fullerton, told Motherboard. “I know [co-author Paul March] does clean work and, to be honest, I suspect there may really be something there.”

But, Woodward added, there's no theoretical explanation for the phenomenon that March and his colleagues report. That's not necessarily disqualifying — evidence is evidence — but it is a good reason to stop and take a second look.

“The result they're seeing can't actually be explained in terms of the theory they're proposing,” he said. “So the question is: What is causing it?”

Yeah, what he said!

This National Geographic piece does a great job walking through some of the proposed physics explanations for how the EM drive could generate thrust (if it in fact does). The Eagleworks scientists propose that the microwave photons are pushing against something called “quantum vacuum virtual plasma” — something that hasn't been proven to exist. Physicist Mike McCullough of the University of Plymouth has proposed a new (also unproven) kind of radiation experienced by accelerating objects could be at work. The phenomenon might be evidence of a hypothesis developed by Woodward, called the Mach effect, in which the energy generated by the accelerating body is actually stored within the body.

Or, it's possible that this whole idea is poppycock, a dead-end project fueled by fantasy and just enough evidence to convince scientists that they should keep going. That would be nothing new. Isaac Newton himself was a dyed-in-the-wool alchemist who wasted years trying to turn lead into gold. The allure of achieving the impossible is incredibly powerful, and not even the best scientists in history are immune.

It's too soon to make a call either way about EM drives. But the Eagleworks paper will likely provide a tiny nudge toward credibility.

Writing in Forbes, astrophysicist Brian Koberlein said, “Even as a skeptic I have to admit the work is valid research. This is how science is done if you want to get it right. Do experiments, submit them to peer review, get feedback, and reevaluate. For their next trick the researchers would like to try the experiment in space. I admit that’s an experiment I’d like to see.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.space.com/34797-impossible-space-engine-emdrive-study-published.html

Test of 'Impossible' EmDrive Space Engine Passes Peer Review

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 22, 2016 06:52am ET

Good news for all you EmDrive enthusiasts: A new study suggesting that the seemingly impossible space engine may actually work has passed the peer-review process.

The study — which was led by physicist Harold "Sonny" White, of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston — found that an EmDrive design generated small amounts of thrust in the lab. These results were leaked online recently, and now the paper has been published, in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Journal of Propulsion and Power.

Development of the EmDrive was begun by British scientist Roger Shawyer about 15 years ago. The engine works by bouncing microwaves around inside a chamber; it requires no propellant and could therefore usher in a new era of superfast and efficient spaceflight, advocates say.

There's just one little issue: The EmDrive shouldn't work, if you put any stock in Newton's Third Law of Motion ("for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"). The EmDrive doesn't blast anything out the back, so just how it produces thrust (the equal and opposite reaction) is a mystery.

The new study is just a lab test, and it doesn't prove that the EmDrive definitely works — White and his team couldn't rule out all sources of experimental error, for example — so don't let visions of EmDrive-powered spaceships fill your head. However, its publication is the latest in a series of recent steps suggesting that the technology may be more than a sci-fi dream.

Read more about the EmDrive and the recent lab test here.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

 

[night driver]

WAIT!!!


"light sails as proven technology"


WHA!!!!

When did they prove that tech????

And what company is hosting the first Light Yacht Regatta?? And who is building the first Light Yacht???

Yeah I AM that old.