How’s that for a cool title!
H/T to Hans G. Schantz for the retweet on this that brought it to my attention.
This guy is researching a propulsion system based on “quatised inertia” that he says would allow a probe to reach the Oort Cloud in a year and Proxima Centauri in 15 years.
That’s a pretty bold statement. Watch his video if you’re interested. He says he was given a million dollar grant from DARPA to study it.
I wonder if they’ll give me ten million to do my research on cold fusion. My data looks pretty good.
Seriously, he says there’s company putting an experiment into space to test this thing out. I guess we’ll know if it works.
It is now online! My talk at the esteemed @foresightinst in wild & wacky San Francisco, back in June. How new physics (#QI) can enable better propulsion, new energy & interstellar travel in a human lifetime (& gets rid of dark matter too): https://t.co/wPntDlbUM2
— Mike McCulloch (@memcculloch) July 22, 2023
I assume the15 isn’t constant acceleration, flashing through the target system at .4C or whatever?
Even if it were, that would be a massive amount of Delta V, many orders of magnitude past present capabilities.
Tom, I watched his video and he described some kind of quantum vacuum state causing a gain in inertia that was directional for some reason. And somehow this could be harvested using a capacitor. He didn’t ask me for my credit card number so that was good. I assume this is a continuous incremental effect so I guess if it has to stop at Proxima Centauri it’ll take thirty years to get there and thirty years back. But you know, even a manned mission might be doable because of relativistic time dilation. If you watch the video let me know… Read more »
I did a back of the envelope calc to see what sort of continuous accel would get you you 4.3 light years away in 15 years. It was .134G constant but I’m in a pain med haze after surgery late last week. I might have dropped an order of magnitude here and there not to mention that shows arrival velocity being a multiple of C. We can assume something was wrong.
Honestly I can’t figure out where all this usable work is supposed to be coming from. But a steady low acceleration sounds like a sci-fi writer’s dream come true. Hope your recovery goes well Tom.
But a steady low acceleration without apparent input isn’t even science.
But he did put quantum in the title which is like saying AI or magic.