Now NASA Plans Ear-Powered Space Travel!!!

I would say that with this energy is pretty enough to power any potential chip or implant inside human body... we are speaking about small portions of power enough to be sustained...

Ion drive if I`m correct is our fastest propulsion which uses tiny amounts of thrust over long periods where large speeds are made possible.

Ear hair sounds crazy,but sounds as though it would create similar small amounts of energy that the speed of the craft would increase over time like the Ion drive.

But great find Mike.

I think you're taking the title of the article too literally. I don't think they're trying to 'power space travel' but use this as a way to generate power during 'space travel'.

The article seems to refer more to using this as a method of giving astronauts additional power that they can generate themselves. Seems perfectly fine to me.

A bit like solar power. We all know about that and accept it.

I can also see practical applications of this on Earth also, for example wind farms that generate electricity in two forms - the wind itself, and the electricity generated by this technology.

Sure its not going to let you power a country, but it's still something !

As weird as it sounds, your correct! The actual principle being looked into is basically a nano-scale version of wind power. My only question is with outer space being a near vacuume, will they be able to get enought movement to make it work. If you really examin the science they are studying, the theory is really quite fasinating!

Don't judge this article by it's title, or you'll miss out on some really intresting science.

Tim

Oh yes. There's often some doubters who are always good -- they make you crosscheck your work and often they'll duplicate it and then confirm the results. However, if the breakthrough follows logically (this one is really following lines that many aren't familiar with) then it's easily accepted.

gps, let's face it. we're not going to be flying people around on ion propulsion because it takes too long to get where you're going. Ion rockets are much too tame. We'll never get up to light speed using ion propulsion.

But you would only use it as long as you've got plenty of time to travel. And that's hundreds of years to the nearest star system and back! It takes four days to go from zero to 60 (miles per hour)!!

The hair-in-your-ear systems? In theory it's fine. Is it practical? NO! Period!

If we want to explore the universe then what we should be concentrating on are drives that help approach the speed of light in quick time or even faster than light travel. Not waste time and effort and tax payers dollars on some impractical means of propulsion!

Cheers!

I agree with you Mike of coarse its too slow even if it were possible to use it for propulsion now,unless I guess if it was developed on a future craft that was designed to carry and support large amounts of people,where time is not a huge factor.Ion drive could be used to get up to speed and turned over to this new energy that wouldn`t run out.

Though like other posters have said (sorry forgot who) the energy could be used to power equipment etc.

If this was researched and developed it could have many uses,not just for intergalactic travel.But another form of clean power.

Agreed!! And yes, as Sardion mentioned, it could be used for powering small electrical devices inside the spaceships. And probably the igloos on the Moon!

Cheers!