Space propulsion

[KennyR]

In the future propulsion will be intertialess anyway and so won't need vents or exhaust ports. :-P

[KennyR]

No, I mean movement by using a phased and vectored, artificially generated gravitational field. You just fall in whatever direction you like, using the closest large mass to apply your force against. So technically it would be propulsion - but it wouldn't involve inertia, ie. throwing something backwards to go forwards.

[KennyR]

tpg wrote:
That way aren't you just overcoming inertia much more efficiently?

Well technically yes, but you're pushing against the more massive body using the curvature of space itself, so the inertia of your own craft is cancelled out (which is what you want). Basically, you're creating space between where you were and where you want to be. This means you don't have to expend most of the mass of the craft in fuel just flinging it out the back.

Of course it still involves inertia though - ye canna break the laws o' physics, capn.

[KennyR]

Cymric wrote:
The way I remember my QM lessons was that they have a certain probability to be anywhere they want, with the biggest values centered on A and B. It isn't that they are 'never in between'---the likelihood of seeing an electron 'in between' is just very, very small.

That's how electron clouds work, but that doesn't define the orbitals. The actual orbitals have discrete energy levels where an electron just seems to pop out of existence and back in again at a different level. They don't exist inbetween for real, not even quadrillionths of a quadrillionth of an instant. This is what being a quanta is all about.

Quantum decoherence of macroscopic systems is most likely going to prevent that.

Yep, decoherence kills all quantum effects stone dead. The only way to get most quantum effects working is at several thousands of a degree near absolute zero on the picometer scale. Not useful for a spacecraft.