[AR] Re: [UK OFFICIAL] Re: NASA test of quantum vacuum plasma thruster (was "Anyone heard of this?")

  • From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 10:27:06 -0700



On 8/4/2014 5:18 AM, Aplin Alexander T wrote:

Jake Anderson:


I do like the idea of the test being done in basically a clear bell jar

inside a (large) Faraday cage.

I also like the pendulum, however I'm less keen on the piezo pressure

sensor.

I suggest a laser interferometer aimed at the pendulum.
If you want to verify thrust in a direction put 2 test devices on it,

have the oppose each other, turn one on you should get a displacement in
one direction, turn it off you should return to zero, >turn the other on
displacement in the opposite direction, you don't need to make any
changes inside the test device to perform the test which is nice.

FWIW Jerry Pournelle (SF author and former aerospace engineer who
previously encountered the ‘Dean Drive’) is also pro the ‘pendulum in
vacuum’ test method:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/dean-drive-and-nasa/

And

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/dean-drive-and-many-other-matters-a-mixed-mail-bag/
I'm several-nines sure Jerry and G.Harry Stine discussed with each other how to test such devices.
Jerry mentions in his letters column there the reason for making it a motion pendulum rather than a torsion device: Gravity is a lot less likely to interact with the "drive" power than (electronic) torsion measurement devices. If you can produce an optically measurable pendulum offset against gravity (and you've accounted for magnetic effects of course) you're somewhat more likely to have something more interesting than instrument error going on. 

Henry

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