The Mach Effect Gravity Assist Drive - is it bunk?

www.youtube.com...

The above video will be the source information: Angry Astronaut explains it well enough.

I feel sorry for the guys working on the MEGA drive, because I think all they've done is make a voltage multiplier. You can see how voltage multipliers expel electrons such that you can lift paper or foil with it, and it actually generates a wind.

You can see the "magic wand" here:

www.youtube.com...

So what's going wrong (or right for that matter) in the proposed MEGA drive? Well a piezoelectric crystal is essentially a capacitor and a voltage multiplier uses capacitors and diodes in series to multiply the voltage.

So to suggest that the MEGA drive is just a voltage multiplier, I wanted to demonstrate that the other components of the drive, an aluminum and brass cap, are in fact acting as diodes (restricting flow of electrons one direction).

Learn how a diode is made here:
www.youtube.com...

At this point I'd think the "MEGA drive" experiment is actually just an uninsulated terribly inefficient diode which combined with the piezoelectric effect is able to give off a bit more electrons than put into the system because of the effect of the diode "doping" the system.

The aluminum in the MEGA drive is the obvious P-type doped side of the diode.

The SiO of the quartz is the Silicon semiconductor which as quartz is not conductive but is piezoelectric so becomes semiconductive as one would expect when given charge or in this case also when pressure is applied.

The fact that the structure of the crystal expands with charge added is irrelevant and isn't changing the mass in any meaningful way (Newton's Bucket Effect // Mach Effect).

This NASA paper describes the construction of the MEGA drive and as I suspected the nature of the brass is omitted. This is important because brass can be doped with silicon making it an N-type doped side of a diode.

Here's the NASA paper:
www.nasa.gov...

Look up "Silicon Brass" or "Silicon Bronze" to see how that alloy works, and you'll realize it's essentially a very poor N-type diode.

So basically if we look at the MEGA Drive, what we get is an Aluminum plate against a silicon crystal, where at the contact at least is a P-type silicon effect, and we have a brass plate against a silicon crystal where the contact is an N-type silicon effect.

The crystal itself is already conductive as a Si-O crystal and therefore the piezoelectric effect, so we essentially do have a capacitor - but I'm not even convinced that the MEGA drive is as efficient as a voltage muliplier.

It's just a stone-age diode with no insulation spitting off electrons in one direction.

A way to test this theory is to reverse the polarity and does the device move equally in the opposite direction? The answer is no. How do I know this? Because the experiments are always described as the effect between the crystal and the brass. As if they have any kind of relationship?

The crystal could be put next to a chunk of Uranium, or a lead brick and should work the same, but it's always the "brass" that's magical.

The answer is because of the directionality of a diode. If you pass an opposite polarity current through a diode it just heats up and doesn't pass the current through, a diode is a one-way valve.

So the brass is important because it's giving the experimenter a "directionality" of charge. You have to build the MEGA drive a certain way and pass a certain polarity of current through it, and you use the brass as the reference point, it's the cathode. The aluminium is the anode.

Now - I suspect the reason the experiment doesn't even always work is because the nature of what type of brass is used. I would imagine a Silicon Brass works better for this experiment in enhancing the diode properties of this system.

The easiest way therefore to debunk this MEGA drive would be to build it, test that it "works" then cover it in epoxy and test if that works. I also suspect it won't work in a vacuum because electrons won't fly off the voltage multiplier (or exit the diode) unless into a medium. epoxy will prevent the charges from interacting with the atmosphere. A vacuum should do the same. Here's the principle of this explained:

youtu.be...

It's also possible that this is some kind of field emission electric propulsion unit.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: DarthTrader

No. A piezoelectric is a crystal that transforms physical vibrations into electrical currents. That is why I can plug my acoustic guitar into an amplifier and get wild feedback and an acoustic guitar sound out!!

The effect is not huge (the same idea is behind converting heat to electricity), but it does work!

The EM drive… well, it has been shown to provide thrust but at micro-Newton levels. The “why” is still being investigated. The thing is, it actually might work if configured as specified.

The amplification of energetic particles seems to be more likely in the nuclear fusion rockets. But I wonder if that will be more than converting the fusion plasma into electricity and feeding ion rockets. IDK which will win out; maybe something we haven’t even dreamt of yet!!

You can write some tech off but you have to show why it doesn’t work at all. And piezoelectric is not a capacitor! It doesn’t “store” energy.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Beautifully put right there

I wonder what happened with NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Project? From the impression I got back in the two thousands was somebody named Slepian actually won the thing and they took the engine private.

Not that I can find that information anymore but I distinctly remember that for a contest that gave out grants of $50,000 for various ideas this scientist named Slepian was getting $919,000 by direct Congressional action bypassing the BPP review process. And then the project goes dark the year after.

At the time it seemed this Slepian had a working idea. And then that unmanned X-37 goes up and disappears for months or years at a time? Oh, and look at this line from this Space. com article.

Link.

Quote: The OTV-5 mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017 on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission lasted 780 days (another record) carried the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, an experiment designed to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to an Air Force statement. It also carried several other experiments and small satellites, Air Force officials said. OTV-5 landed on Oct. 27, 2019 at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility, marking the second time an X-27B has done so.The OTV-5 mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017 on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission lasted 780 days (another record) carried the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, an experiment designed to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to an Air Force statement. It also carried several other experiments and small satellites, Air Force officials said. OTV-5 landed on Oct. 27, 2019 at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility, marking the second time an X-27B has done so.


If I had to guess I would say they figured out something 20+ years ago and have been studying it to death in Black Operations since then.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: DarthTrader

No. A piezoelectric is a crystal that transforms physical vibrations into electrical currents. That is why I can plug my acoustic guitar into an amplifier and get wild feedback and an acoustic guitar sound out!!

The effect is not huge (the same idea is behind converting heat to electricity), but it does work!

The EM drive… well, it has been shown to provide thrust but at micro-Newton levels. The “why” is still being investigated. The thing is, it actually might work if configured as specified.

The amplification of energetic particles seems to be more likely in the nuclear fusion rockets. But I wonder if that will be more than converting the fusion plasma into electricity and feeding ion rockets. IDK which will win out; maybe something we haven’t even dreamt of yet!!

You can write some tech off but you have to show why it doesn’t work at all. And piezoelectric is not a capacitor! It doesn’t “store” energy.

You better tell universities and esteemed scientists that piezoelectric crystals aren't capacitors, because they are:
canvas.uw.edu...

The effect you describe does nothing to the mass of the piezoelectric crystal, which is the principle claim of the MEGA drive. Rather I put forth the very obvious alternative, that they've essentially built some kind of "field emission electric propulsion" drive by basically creating a diode. And I've demonstrated HOW they are making that diode.

The next step in rocketry is likely fission-impulse, because we can double our impulse immediately. Space nuclear reactors (look up eVinci heat-pipe nuclear reactor) were conceived but not durable or a thing on large scale since 1960 to 2020.

But new forms of SMRs or micro-reactors now are durable enough to survive space flight.

So likely we'll at least double our Isp from ~450 max to ~900 max.

Getting from there likely does require something along the lines of a plasma jet, using high energy to magnetic-bottle a plasma column into extreme temperatures and pressures. Think of a fusion reactor that doesn't produce surplus energy.

Then releasing this plasma jet at those extreme temperatures and pressures the same as a chemical or fissile rocket.

I couldn't begin to propose the Isp potential unless we base it off the temperature/pressure of a fissile heated hydrogen rocket then just assume the relationship to velocity is linear which for boyle's gas law, I'd assume it probably is linear.

So if the gas reaches a velosity due to heat/pressure of about 900 Isp, then imagine what happens when you increase the heat by 100x, and the pressure by 100x.

originally posted by: ntech
I wonder what happened with NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Project? From the impression I got back in the two thousands was somebody named Slepian actually won the thing and they took the engine private.

Not that I can find that information anymore but I distinctly remember that for a contest that gave out grants of $50,000 for various ideas this scientist named Slepian was getting $919,000 by direct Congressional action bypassing the BPP review process. And then the project goes dark the year after.

At the time it seemed this Slepian had a working idea. And then that unmanned X-37 goes up and disappears for months or years at a time? Oh, and look at this line from this Space. com article.

Link.

Quote: The OTV-5 mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017 on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission lasted 780 days (another record) carried the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, an experiment designed to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to an Air Force statement. It also carried several other experiments and small satellites, Air Force officials said. OTV-5 landed on Oct. 27, 2019 at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility, marking the second time an X-27B has done so.The OTV-5 mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017 on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The mission lasted 780 days (another record) carried the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, an experiment designed to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to an Air Force statement. It also carried several other experiments and small satellites, Air Force officials said. OTV-5 landed on Oct. 27, 2019 at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility, marking the second time an X-27B has done so.


If I had to guess I would say they figured out something 20+ years ago and have been studying it to death in Black Operations since then.

They can't even keep the basic engineering of B-21 bomber "under wraps". I highly doubt they have something more secretive than that for 20+ years. The Russians are usually light years ahead of the US in most tech. Their execution sucks but they are more advanced.

They do things like land on Venus and send functional biggest nuclear reactors into space, etc.

If they aren't doing it - US probably isn't.

Even Buran was a better spacecraft than the Orbiter, and the smaller version was essentially a drone, which "Sierra Space" or whatever it's called with its Dreamliner is only now doing 30+ years later.

a reply to: DarthTrader

But being a conspiracy board the thing about NASA is that the Space Shuttle was just supposed to be a expensive distraction to keep the public diverted away from exploratory science and actually getting men on the Moon and eventually to Mars.

The Shuttles real purpose was to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Why? Maybe they did find aliens that didn't like us nosing around up there. Maybe they figured out humans can't last more than a few weeks with the radiation levels out there.

But I thing NASA is hiding something. Maybe multiple somethings. A prototype space engine that's on the X-37b undergoing shakedown flights could just be the tip of a very large iceberg.

a reply to: DarthTrader

Here is the Wikipedia entry for piezoelectricity. The calculations do not include C for capacity charge. Indeed they can be used to make a capacitor (ceramics) but then it is not being used as a converter of physical to electrical current. In fact, capacitors are usually added to a pz circuit because the current is not constant enough and needs to be smoothed out.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: DarthTrader

The way I thought these EM drives work is like this. According to Newton's law of motion a action has a equal and opposite reaction. So how do you break that? Yet still manage to obey the letter of the law? What I thought of was Newton's law of energy which states "While energy cannot be created or destroyed it can be transformed."

So to break and yet still obey the law what you would do is add a transformation layer between the action and reaction. Since they are both kinetic energy it should be possible to do something to the reaction so that in the final result the reaction is either not equal or opposite. Or both. Therefore creation a reactionless action that could be used for an engine.

Simple idea would be a flywheel with a magnet attached to it. Have a electromagnet attached at the 3:00 position and rotate the flywheel clockwise up to say 300 rpm. Disengage the drive motor so the flywheel is rotating freely. Then for about 5 or 10 rotations have the 3:00 electromagnet turn on while the flywheel magnet is between 12:00 and almost 3:00 opposing the rotation of the magnet.

Bang, Bang, Bang, and Bang. The action is the electromagnet is pushed in a downward motion as the flywheel slows. If you're afraid the motor would just rotate around itself then add a mirrored identical flywheel doing the same thing just rotating in the opposite direction with it's magnet at the 9:00 position.

Now your motor is creating motion with the reaction being the flywheel's slow down. Once you're slowed past a certain point then speed the flywheels back up and repeat.

Bang Bang Bang.

Though what I'm thinking is with that MEGA drive is that they figured out how to convert part of the reaction into heat and it's showing up as an imbalance.