Impossible quantum drive scheduled for “do or die” October space flight

Gravityloss · on July 11, 2023

100 millinewtons from how many watts of input energy?

Spaceflight is not the most interesting application for this.

You can make it go around and spin a generator. After some speed it produces more energy than it consumes. Meaning fuelless generators.

So color me skeptical.

jiggawatts · on July 12, 2023

That’s not at all the claim, and that’s not how it would work. If you tried to extract energy from the rotation, it would just stop.

Space flight is exactly the use-case for a propellantless drive because it would allow unlimited station keeping with only solar power as an input.

Satellites often have to be decommissioned because they run out of gas for their reaction control systems.

This drive would never run out.

Gravityloss · on July 12, 2023

Power = thrust times velocity.

If this has constant thrust at constant power no matter what the speed and doesn't require propellant, then at the speed of power / thrust it's working at unity and over that speed it actually generates positive energy.

There is already a reaction less drive, photons. The unity speed turns out to be the speed of light. It is also very impractical as thuster since it requires so much power per unit of thrust.

rurban · on July 13, 2023

This drive will run out every 12 hours, when sunlight is blocked by the earth. Or just bad positioning.