Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: 9743 on 20/11/2008 20:09:31
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im writing a sci fi and have come to a road block. i need a propultion system that might work (can be theoretical/hypothetical) and want some good ideas. iv come up with a few myself but would like some input. the key point is that the reaction mass would need to be gathered enrout. iv looked at ramscoop and solar sails, but i was hoping for something a little more compact (that dosent have to be hundreds of times larger than the ship its attached to.) a plausable sounding form of reactionless drive would be perfect, (iv been fooling around with the idea of using artificial gravaty wells and all that). does not need to be real, only that it sound plausable and atleast has some scientific backing.
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Little is known about dark matter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter) and dark energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy) so you will have plenty of artistic licence.
There should be plenty of the stuff about to power your fictional spacecraft...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter
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And you also get to have a cool Dark energy matrix to help you locate all your Dark matter or energy
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thank you, i had been looking at the idea of dark matter and negative mass a number of times, and still am considering it. the highest one in mind right now however is using the hydrogen that is so abundant in space. even if i don't like the scale needed for a real one iv always been fascinated with the idea of a ram scoop, probably as early as 5. it just seems so elegantly simple to me.
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What about laser propulsion ?, currently not much more than a parlour trick ...
Whenever rockets leave Earth, the satellites and other cargo they carry account for just a fraction of their weight. Most--up to 90 percent--of a rocket's weight comes from its fuel. This presents a problem for rocket designers: the more a rocket weighs, the more fuel you need to boost it into space. But how do you reduce a rocket's weight without reducing the fuel needed to launch it? Leik Myrabo, an aerospace engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, says the solution is to take the power source off the rocket and leave it on the ground, reducing launch costs to at least a hundredth of what they are now. Working at the Air Force Research Laboratory in California with aerospace engineer Franklin Mead, Myrabo has built a number of six-inch-wide prototypes that in early tests have reached a height of more than 70 feet without so much as a drop of onboard propellant...
However, above about 18 miles, there's not enough air to form the plasma, so the craft would have to switch to a reserve of liquid hydrogen fuel, which the laser would ignite to boost it into space.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_/ai_n27519117
but possibly suitable for a fictional spacecraft.
http://www.aibep.org/Membership/Laser_Propulsion_Introduction.pdf
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By my opinion the only way that humanity is allowed freely to explore the universe , is to use magnetic propulsion , which will allowed to freely lift from earth surface , and to freely explore universe . There is one thing , Iam deeply sure that whole universe has his own magnetic poles , not only the stars , theory which scientist dont even think about .... with billions of dollars and euros spend for the rockets and fuels , nobody acctualy try to send two simple plus and minus peace of metal with sensors to deep space , to explore universe magnetic field frequency. It is maybe amateur theory , and foolish , but still I believe , that magnets are the only propulsion humanity will ever need.