NASA's Super Secret Warp Drive Program
Warp Factor – A NASA scientist claims to be on the verge of faster-than-light travel: is he for real?, Popular Science
“The device looks like a large red velvet doughnut with wires tightly wound around a core, and it’s one of two initiatives Eagleworks is pursuing, along with warp drive. It’s also secret. When I ask about it, White tells me he can’t disclose anything other than that the technology is further along than warp drive … Yet when I ask how it would create the negative energy necessary to warp space-time he becomes evasive. “That gets into . . . I can tell you what I can tell you. I can’t tell you what I can’t tell you,” he says. He explains that he has signed nondisclosure agreements that prevent him from revealing the particulars. I ask with whom he has the agreements. He says, “People come in and want to talk about some things. I just can’t go into any more detail than that.”
Clarifying NASA’s Warp Drive Program
Keith’s 7 April note: Did Harold White sign NDAs as an individual? I am not sure how you can do that while working on taxpayer-funded projects as a NASA civil servant. Is this research SBU? Is it classified? Is he working for DARPA or some other funding entity while at NASA? Does NASA have Space Act Agreements or MOUs that it is not talking about? If this research is not SBU then why won’t Harold White go into detail? How much is NASA spending on this anyway?
Keith’s 8 April update : NASA HQ PAO, JSC PAO, and Harold White have declined thus far to respond to a series of questions on this topic – or acknowledge receipt of the questions.
Keith’s 9 April update : Still nothing but silence from NASA PAO and Harold White. I guess it is FOIA time.
While I can understand the point of the 100-Year Starship project, I don’t really grasp why they’re giving money to Sonny White to look into the Alcubierre Warp Drive. My guess is that he’s hoping you don’t start asking that, either – he got really evasive when asked if they had a way to deal with the issue of actually getting that negative mass-energy that even his set-up requires to work (the kind that theoretically could exist, but which has never been observed except possibly in the negative pressure from the Casimir Effect).
a day late ?
and a dollar short ??
Great! In few times we can are in other world style!
What? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Great! Soon we may be on other worlds. (My english is bad)
NASA is rife with solicitations of “game changing technologies”, i.e. develop antigravity for $100K. . The theory is that if we are bold enough to ask for the impossible, then obviously the engineers can build it.
The requirement for negative mass is only one of several fundamental
problems with the Alcubierre Warp Drive and derivatives of it. Among
the flaws: to get the drive set up in the first place, you need to be
able to move faster than light. That is, even if you had huge amounts
of negative mass and enormous energy available, to configure the
negative mass as a faster-than-light drive, you need to be able to move
faster than light. [D. H. Coule (1998), “No Warp Drive”, Classical and
Quantum Gravity]
Alcubierre came up with a clever scheme that
seemed to allow FTL travel within some of the limits of known physics.
But Coule’s analysis definitively shows that it violates other known
principals of physics. Continuing to pursue the same idea after it has
been demonstrated that it can’t work is simple stupidity. That’s why
mainstream physicists have lost interest in Alcubierre’s drive.
If
you want a warp drive, you need to do basic physics research to see if
current physics is wrong, and propose alternatives that are supported by
experiments. That’s what thousands of real physicists do every day.
That’s not what White is doing. White isn’t proposing any new physics.
He’s not proposing or doing any experiments that would contradict known
physics. He’s a fool who thinks he can do something within known
physics that, in fact, contradicts known physics. White is simply not
smart enough to understand that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
“If you want a warp drive, you need to do basic physics research to see if current physics is wrong, and propose alternatives that are supported by experiments“
Chris,
I agree with your statement within the boundaries of how you intended it, but there is another aspect that I think we have to consider. For lack of a common term, I call this other aspect “context.” It more or less pertains to the boundaries within which a concept applies.
For example, when Einstein came along and refined some of Newton’s basic concepts in physics, scientists didn’t decide that Newton had been wrong, but rather that “Newtonian Physics” was applicable only within certain boundaries, or within a certain context, using my term.
A simpler but similar example is a phase change. Water, steam, water vapor, and ice are all examples of H2O, but their individual characteristics are quite different. That doesn’t make the characteristics of any one of them “wrong”; it’s just a matter of applicability within specific boundaries, different contexts.
Before Einstein did his work, we would have considered anything that contradicted Newton as wrong, which turned out to be an invalid assessment in light of newer learning — the addition of a new context. The situation with “warp drive” theories, or concepts for any non-inertial (non-rocket, if you prefer) drives may well turn out to be another example of the same thing. There may be another context within which the rules and restrictions of Einstein’s Physics don’t apply (you can’t skate on steam). If this is the case (a big if, granted), then the argument that something contradicts current physics doesn’t apply, and therefore can’t be used to rule out new possibilities (independent of whether those possibilities are valid or nonsense).
And that leaves us with the question of: How do we really determine whether a theory for a new/different “space drive” has any validity? It comes back to “basic physics research,” as you said, but the purpose is to test/refine the “new” theory, not to “see if current physics is wrong.” Personally, I strongly suspect that there are several additional contexts in physics that we’ve not yet realized, let alone taken into account. If the past repeats itself, then we’ll get unexpected experimental results that lead to theorizing each new context (i.e., explaining the results) rather than developing a theory for a new context first and then looking for experimental evidence to support it. If this is the case, then investigations like those going on at NASA are the only path forward. And, we shouldn’t be at all surprised if new, valid concepts are discovered that are completely different from what was being looked for.
For what it’s worth, that’s how I see things.
Steve
Steve,
We’re just using different terms for the same thing. I put all of what you’re talking about under the label “new physics”. New physics doesn’t necessarily mean currently-known rules don’t work well in certain domains. It often means the discovery of new domains in which the rules are different, as you say.
Where I do disagree with you is on the question of whether any form of an Alcubierre Drive or capacitor ring is worth any further consideration. They are not. They are not based on any new theory, or any new experimental results. They are based on a proposed engineering solution (the Alcubierre Drive) that was originally proposed to follow known laws of physics. This solution has since been shown not to follow all the known laws of physics. White has stubbornly clung to the hope that Alcubierre’s basic principal might still be made to work, not because there’s any theoretical reason for it or because there’s any experimental result that suggests it, but simply because it would be cool if it did work. That’s like continuing to try to find a way to express pi as a fraction of one integer over another even after it’s been mathematically proven that pi is irrational.
All White’s explanations about why he thinks his capacitor ring setups should work are based on currently accepted physics misunderstood, not on new physics. A misunderstanding of current physics is not new physics.
To quote from the PopSci article: “Noah Graham, a physicist at Middlebury College who read two of White’s
papers at my request, wrote in an e-mail: “I don’t see any valid science
in either paper beyond the summaries of previous work.”” And this is from the PopSci writer who otherwise shows a naive credulity in repeating as fact most of the hype White tells him.
In fact, in spite of White’s pushing his ideas for years, he has yet to convince any reputable physicist, anywhere in the world, that his ideas have any merit at all. Why do you think that is? Do you really think physicists are all so close minded? Don’t you think it’s possible that there are a lot of open minding physicists out there who would seriously consider a new idea? Don’t you think it’s possible that physicists have rejected White’s ideas because they are based on faulty reasoning?
Chris,
I agree as far as White’s work and attitude are concerned (and several others as well). I was arguing the general case, and there we seem to agree.
I guess what sparked my comment is that I get disappointed by the number of the times I read of scientists — supposedly the purveyors of the scientific method — dismissing new or controversial ideas out of hand, without personally having done any relevant experimentation, simply because they’re new or controversial, or contrary to their personal previous beliefs. That, in my books, does not constitute peer review.
Obviously science and its practitioners need to be open-minded. Also, I think more scientists need to realize that it’s OK to say “I don’t know.” It seems to me that too many scientists appear to think that they must provide an answer/opinion on every question they’re asked, which I don’t consider reasonable.
As for White’s ideas being based on “faulty reasoning,” I would rather say that there appears to be no experimental evidence at all to support his ideas and they are contrary to commonly accepted theory. It probably sounds like a fussy distinction on my part, but I consider all “reasoning” in science to be subjective and therefore not definitive.
With respect to the general topic of “space drives,” my gut feel is that we’re in for some eventual surprises, and they probably have little or nothing to do with the ideas currently being investigated — but one never knows, so I say dismiss nothing, no matter how seemingly far-fetched, until it’s been thoroughly worked over (as the Alcubierre Drive concept has). Optimism!
Steve
I think if someone wants to do this kind of research they should do it on their own dime. When they have found something new and it can be duplicated by others then using taxpayer’s money can be considered. Here is a discussion forum where Paul March, who works at this lab, and others have been talking about this for the past 5 years. http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
If that was the way of things then we’d still be living in the dark ages. R&D, like infrastructure, has always been a government responsibility, paid for by taxes, because there’s no other way. Your system simply wouldn’t work because the money, the capability, and the willingness all have to come together in sufficient amounts to accomplish anything significant, and nobody’s going to do that “on their own dime”. There are no Tony Starks.
There appears to be two standards for NASA research. This lab operates without publishing any papers describing the results of their research; possibly because there isn’t anything to write about. Meanwhile everyone else has to publish a paper so others can duplicate their work and confirm it. Peer review is what separates the wheat from the chaff in scientific research. If an idea has merit and the results published it should be funded. Theories that can’t be verified and research that is not made available for independent confirmation just takes money from more deserving programs.
This research is really just a continuation of Prof. James F.Woodward of Cal State Fullerton’s research concerning the Mach effect; an idea that predates Einstein’s General Relativity. White, Paul March, and Woodward before them have been trying to show capacitors when discharged rapidly generate momentum. I have witnessed something similar: Whenever I get zapped by a charged capacitor I fly across the room.
I have no argument with any of that, but notice that all of the work you cite was paid for by tax dollars, directly or indirectly, not someone’s own dime. That, I think, is the only thing we disagree on.
As for repeating work already done, that’s always been happening in science, for a variety of reasons. Some scientists simply won’t accept documented, peer reviewed “evidence” and have to see things for themselves. They have to convince their bosses to pay for it first, though. At NASA, the inconsistencies are, like a lot of problems there, a consequence of having so many centers, each with considerable autonomy. But then again, if HQ were to try to oversee and rationalize everything done at the centers a whole lot less would get done, slowed by bureaucracy.
I disagree, this is exactly the type of research that should be funded by public money. No private enterprise will invest into uncertain returns. The only stipulation there should be that all work done under an initiative like this should be published, and all results are property of NASA that will automatically be granted a patent without expiration.
I’d say you’ve got it backwards. Blue sky work should be publicly funded, and published openly. Once someone can show practical effect, then it can be left for private/commercially funded development of applications.
NASA should fund innovative science but a line has to be drawn somewhere. This Mach effect idea has been around for a while. Woodward presented a paper at a NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics conference in 1999, the illustrations in the Wikipedia Woodward Effect page are from Woodward’s 2006 experiment. So in over 14 years this idea has not progressed. Independent researchers have not been able to duplicate March’s results. Although to be fair he says they “weren’t doing it right”. The object of this experiment is a Micrometals T106-2 powdered iron toroid cut in half and then joined back together with large ceramic caps in the gaps. Some enamel wire is scramble-wound on the core and the LC driven @ 2 MHz with a Ham transmitter. Any claimed thrust could be from thermal effects or almost anything else considering the power levels. There are any number of experiments like this that require an adjustment to the generally accepted laws of physics. Martin Tajmar, Roger Shawyer, Norman Deane, Eric Laithewaite, and Josef Papp should all get in line.
William, my apologies.
I misread your original comment as “Govt shouldn’t support research that doesn’t have an obvious commercial pay-off” (I’d seen a couple of similar comments recently so I was primed for it). Now I see you meant “Govt shouldn’t give money to [say, homeopathy] until proponents can prove that [water-memory] is an actual thing.” And I complete agree with you.
But just to be a twisty bastard, I will say there’s an exception: Just as govt’s should support blue-sky research, I believe there’s also a requirement to support geniuses even when they are off chasing fairies. Because you never know when they’ll find something… odd.
(As someone (Asimov?) said, revolutions in science don’t sound like “Eureka!”, they sound like “Hmmm, that’s odd.”)
But whether White is a genius worthy of being indulged, I have no idea.
I obviously want to see humanity develop viable interstellar travel one day, hopefully within a couple of centuries. Alcubierre’s Warp drive is perhaps one path, but NASA and the scientific community should be exploring all possible approaches to Faster-than-Light (FTL) travel rather than just one approach. But the problem is that whilst FTL is an important goal for the longer term – say 200 year timeframe – I think its really critical NASA start thinking more ambitiously for the short to medium term – 30 to 50 years. Where does NASA want to be in 2065 for example?
I’d think most people on ‘NASA Watch’ have their own views on this question. My opinion is that NASA, together with the commercial space industry, and with allied international space partners, should aim for a permanent human presence off-Earth. Not just six astronauts on a space station – I’m talking hundreds or thousands of people living and working permanently in space, in LEO, at Langrange Point facilities in Cislunar Space, on the Lunar surface, mining the Near Earth Asteroids, and settling Mars.
So permanent human settlement of Space should be goal number one.
Secondly, we need to achieve goal number one by 2065, and do it in a cost-effective and efficient and safe manner. I think our current approach – epitomised by the Orion spacecraft and SLS – is actually a step back to the Apollo era. NASA should be investing in new technologies for accessing LEO through completely reusable systems, that can also allow a high operational tempo in terms of launches. I don’t think big rockets and Apollo style capsules which lack payload capacity are the answer. I think more elegant solutions – reusable aerospace planes, and space elevators should be our goal. Aim for fast, low-cost access to space for a paying customers, be it for supporting space industry, for exploration and resource exploitation, or for space tourism. I think commercial space industry needs to take the lead on this goal.
Thirdly, whilst our initial goal of permanent human settlement of space by 2065 is important, and we should seek to expand the number of humans living off planet, with colonisation of Mars being a key objective, we should always be looking outward, and human expansion into space should not stop at Mars orbit. I think that we need to start investing in radically new propulsion systems, spacecraft design, life support and environmental protection, to enable a crewed mission to the Jupiter system by 2065, with the goal being Ganymede, Callisto and possibly Europa providing the radiation problem can be addressed. So start thinking about new spacecraft technology that enables human missions to the outer planets in a fast, safe and cost effective manner. Maybe think in terms of launching such a mission not from Earth’s surface, but from a base on Phobos.
Use a ‘stepping stone’ approach that allows human space exploration to more distant objectives, via settlement of closer objectives – Mars and Near-Earth Asteroids, combined with R&D into new spacecraft technology that makes space travel faster and safer – as our jumping off points. Change our mindset away from an ‘Earth-centric’ space programme, to a ‘Space-centric’ programme, so that maybe one day, the only launches from Earth are hypersonic aerospaceplanes taking off from regular airports, and ‘climbers’ ascending the Space Elevator out of Hawaii or Singapore. Rockets are ‘so yesterday’!
So by 2065 humanity should have a permanent presence on a large scale in Space, stretching from Low Earth Orbit out to Mars, and is taking the first steps for humans visiting the Outer Planets. We are doing space travel much more safely, more cheaply, more quickly, and more reguarly. Whilst this is happening, the scientific community and commercial companies should be in a race to develop new spacecraft technologies that will enable us to go further, faster. Explore more of the Outer Planets, and ultimately, perhaps by 2165, think about a human mission to nearby Exoplanets which could potentially support life. Going to Alpha Centauri, or Tau Ceti, is an order of magnitude more challenging than sending a crewed vehicle even to Neptune. But its not impossible. A key goal for both government and private industry in the 21st Century is working out how to do it. Maybe FTL is not possible, but pushing a vehicle up to relativistic velocities, so Time Dilation can play a role for nearby star-systems, should be a goal.
My vision for 2065 and potentially, for 2165.
Dr. Malcolm R Davis,
Bond University
Queensland, Australia.
The obstacle to large numbers of people living in or visiting space is not speed, but cost. At current costs it is unaffordable.
So was commercial air travel back in the 1930s. Cost decreases as investment in innovation delivers technological advance. Orion and SLS is a step back, not a step forward. The goal should be $1000 per pound to orbit; fast, fully reusable, cost efficient and safe Earth to LEO space transportation that has a high operational tempo, and investments in space industry and resources that deliver an economic return from space, which can then be reinvested into developing better and more efficient space travel for a greater number of humans. Plus have some place to go rather than endlessly circle the Earth, and go no further.
Remember the debate is about 100 to 200 year timeframes – not what we can do in 2013. My view is we should be doing something new by 2065. If by 2065 we are still relying on expendable rockets and capsules, we have failed miserably. Thats like flying a Ford Trimotor today, rather than an A-380. I think that we made a fundamental error after the Columbia disaster to turn back to capsules, rather than develop a better and safer space shuttle.
Obviously there has to be a valid business case to justify a substantial human presence in Space. Exploiting space resources in asteroids and on the lunar surface in my opinion provides one justification, if the investment returns massive profits into the bank balances of private corporations or governments. Those profits can be then reinvested into developing technology to do space travel and space settlement more effectively and safely, and more rapidly. It can also be invested into the broader economy. A study by USAF in the 1990s suggested the value of a metal-rich asteroid was roughly $9 trillion USD – what could you do with that sort of money?
The second is human survival. We are one large asteroid away from extinction at any given time, until we can spread humanity off-world and spread across the solar system. Colonisation of space – particuarly of Mars – means that short of an unexpected massive cosmic disaster – humanity survives. The more worlds we are on, the higher our chances of our species surviving.
The third justification is exploration. We are an exploratory species, and have been ever since we wandered out of Africa two million years ago. Even if we can’t do interstellar travel yet, there is a vast solar system out there that we are only beginning to explore. And its simply not good enough to say ‘lets use unmanned probes’ – that is not satisfying because ‘we’ are’nt there. The Curiosity Mars Rover is an amazing piece of hardware, and I watched the ‘seven minutes of terror’ live and was glad it made it down, but how many of us actually are excited that it has drilled a hole and may have discovered that billions of years ago, Mars may have had water. In no way can that compare to ‘That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for Mankind’.
The Universe beckons in the same way an unexplored Earth beckoned the explorers of centuries past. To turn our backs on that call because of economic rationalisation, or a narrow mindset which focuses only on problems here on Earth is an anathema to what humans are really all about, and turns our back on humanity’s destiny. Thats why its vital that we think ambitiously and boldly, and thinking about how we colonise the Solar System, and have large numbers of people living and working in space, and thinking about how we do interstellar travel one day, is vital. If we don’t think big, we go nowhere.
Malcolm
Come on, people. It’s a hugely small amount of money. This kind of deep research is necessary, period. If we knew the payoff we’d call it engineering and not research.
I don’t have a problem with spending money on projects with a low probability of success. But zero probability of success I do have a problem with.
Not all long-shot, far-future ideas are created equal. By squandering money on things we know can’t work, we miss the opportunity to spend it on projects that have some small chance of working.
But as a general argument, who decides what can’t work and what can — before the fact? At the outset every new idea has zero probability of success. Most R&D projects fail multiple times before they finally succeed, if they do. We can’t know the worth of a scientific idea until we test it, otherwise we wouldn’t need science. Have you decided that FTL will always be impossible?
“At the outset every new idea has zero probability of success.”
Not true. At the outset, every new idea has a probability between zero and one. It only becomes zero when someone shows conclusively that it’s impossible.
“We can’t know the worth of a scientific idea until we test it”
That’s not entirely true. If the idea is a theory about the consequences of a particular set of assumptions, we can, in some cases, mathematically prove that the theory is false given those assumptions.
“Have you decided that FTL will always be impossible?”
No. I have been convinced that Alcubierre’s Drive, and derivatives of it, are not consistent with known physics. Since Alcubierre’s Drive was formulated as something that would work as a *consequence* of known physics, not because of a claim known physics was wrong, Alcubierre’s theory was incorrect. It’s a mathematical certainty.
Whether some other FTL technology is possible I do not know. It’s worth researching other FTL possibilities. It’s worth trying to find out where currently known physics is wrong, and replacing currently known physics with new theories that better fit the universe we observe.
Wasting time on an Alcubierre Drive or something derived from it makes it less likely, not more likely, we can find FTL technology that actually works.
Further, any decent physicist who spent some time looking into the Alcubierre Drive would find Coule’s paper in the literature and quickly be convinced not to pursue Alcubierre’s Drive or its derivatives. The fact that White persists in following this line of reasoning convinces me that White is incompetent as a physicist. White should never be employed in physics research, and nothing further that he claims about physics is worth wasting time over.
Chris,
We’ve already agreed on the White situation; I’m trying to consider general cases. I tend to treat physics the same way as I do other sciences, in that two diametrically opposed schools of thought can exist for literally years on a given issue without anybody being absolutely certain which, if either, is correct.
New evidence gets evaluated and each side tries to use it to validate their own case. On occasion, when an issue is finally “settled,” the majority, often the older school, turns out to have been wrong all along and must admit to “changes” in what is accepted — but it is not unheard of for such an issue to be reversed again at a later date in view of newer discoveries. (Chemistry, geology and archeology in particular I find are full of these battles.)
So, what’s “currently known” isn’t always, in the final analysis, accurate, even though we tend to treat it as absolute. Maybe I’m wrong to think of physics in this manner, but it’s my way of trying to keep an open mind. The fun part of physics is that there are always so many interesting open questions. Of course, perhaps it’s not as much fun if your job is to try and solve one of these questions.
Thanks for an interesting discussion.
Steve
Sometimes you do have to ‘swing for the fence’. While the main objective might have ‘no siginificant chance of success’, their might be a lot of knowledge gained in going down the path. I am not familiar with all of the scince, but a lot can be learned just from trying.
How much money is it? It is incredibly hard it is to find even $20K to support a grad student who can do some actual work on a project that could save lives. Cold fusion is at least theoretically possible.
It’s hard to get 20k because it’s too little money. Back in 1973 my research advisor got turned down for a grant from NSF in part because he asked for too little money.
The linked Popular Science article actually did a pretty good job of debunking this work. The quotes from the physicists who work in this area and understand it are quite damning. I can never tell whether the people who promote these concepts, that clearly violate the known laws of physics, are optimistic and confused or willfully conning everyone.
NASA’s investments in new technologies follow NPR 7120.8, which states that someone must write a “Peer reviewed publication of research underlying the proposed concept/application.” to achieve Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 1, so this is at TRL 0 right now. This group will have to publish their physics in a topic-appropriate journal to get to TRL 1. Then they would need to publish how those underlying physics equations feasibly scale to be of some real benefit to NASA to get to TRL 2. They could reach TRL 3 by running a lab experiment that validates the work that got them to TRL 2. This apparatus running in a lab gives people the impression that they are at TRL 3, but you can’t get there without go through 1 & 2 first.
I suspect that when this was written up for PopSci the purpose was more generating public interest in NASA than promoting technical readiness. If so, and if it backfired, well it probably seemed like a good idea at the time to somebody higher up.
I’ve said this before but it deserves to be repeated: Impulse drive first! We need to get things in the right order. We need to first develop the ability to tour around our solar system in a reasonable time-frame, then worry about FTL! With more nearby stars, a decent sub-light drive doubles as a star-drive anyway.
FWIW, I think that hyperdrive (passage through a wormhole or inter-brane space) is more likely to be the form than warp drive for a RL FTL drive.
Ben,
Just looking at the middle ground — less than hyperdrive but more than a rocket — I think you’ve hit on a a key factor: “a decent sub-light drive doubles as a star-drive anyway.” Whether this is totally true or only partially true is up for debate, but the solution to both will most likely, I think, derive from the same theories and the same research, with just differences in the application engineering.
I think the nondisclosure agreement is a big problem. This is basic research. It’s not going to produce a patentable warp drive. The taxpayers deserve open discussion of the theories and facts. Apparently White is building an interferometer to try to detect the relativistic distortion induced by a strong electric field. It might be detectable, like the Casimir effect. Probably not a route to warp drive. Maybe a FOIA request is in order?
It makes me wonder if someone is considering some aspect of this to be either dangerous or too-valuable-to-share if it should actually “work” in some manner. In either case if true, it’s probably just a matter of time, given the internet. The Cold War is over. The best way to prevent a “Space War” (man, that sounds silly) is to share the knowledge, if not the technology. Problem is, there’s still too many old Wolfs, I mean men, who are incapable of thinking that way.
This may be the case. Which is a shame. Because unless Dr. White communicates more freely he will not get anywhere.
My suspicion is this is all a hoax.
For what purpose?
I’m not an expert on the physics involved but I note that the Pop Science article in question was posted prior to noon on 04.01.2013, which surely effectively warps credibility, but unfortunately perhaps not the time/space continuum..?
04.01.2013
Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion Physics Research
NASA/JSC is implementing an advanced propulsion physics laboratory, informally known as “Eagleworks”, to pursue propulsion technologies necessary to enable human exploration of the solar system over the next 50 years, and enabling interstellar spaceflight by the end of the century. This work directly supports the “Breakthrough Propulsion” objectives detailed in the NASA OCT TA02 In-space Propulsion Roadmap, and aligns with the #10 Top Technical Challenge identified in the report. Since the work being pursued by this laboratory is applied scientific research in the areas of the quantum vacuum, gravitation, nature of space-time, and other fundamental physical phenomenon, high fidelity testing facilities are needed.
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/rou… is a NASA link. You are right, not April fools.
Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion Physics Research
NASA/JSC is implementing an advanced propulsion physics laboratory, informally known as “Eagleworks”, to pursue propulsion technologies necessary to enable human exploration of the solar system over the next 50 years, and enabling interstellar spaceflight by the end of the century. This work directly supports the “Breakthrough Propulsion” objectives detailed in the NASA OCT TA02 In-space Propulsion Roadmap, and aligns with the #10 Top Technical Challenge identified in the report. Since the work being pursued by this laboratory is applied scientific research in the areas of the quantum vacuum, gravitation, nature of space-time, and other fundamental physical phenomenon, high fidelity testing facilities are needed.
I have to wonder (quite seriously, not facetious) at the number of mechanical engineers who seem to switch disciplines, often years after they’ve finished their advanced education, and then get into things that are seemingly over their heads. Is there something about mechanical engineering that makes you want to shoot yourself in the foot, or are they just discovering too late that ME simply wasn’t interesting or challenging enough for them? There seems to be a lot of them.
Never shot myself in the foot, but have come close to putting my eye out several times. Thank Dog for polycarbonate glasses.
Eventually, I found ME was over my head, now I just test flight software…
It’s more widespread than that. I call it “Old Scientist Syndrome”. It’s a weird mix of refusing to accept the new mainstream research in your own field, while being open to the bizarrest fringe stuff in unrelated fields.
“posted on April 1st, 2013”
:-/
No point to this NASA research. SpaceX will have warp drive sooner and cheaper. 🙂
Keith, your comment indicates that you are unfamiliar about NDA’s and Intellectual Property issues related to taxpayer funded research. I’d like to explain a bit about NASA’s intellectual property (IP) policies. A lot of it comes down to protecting patent rights and in turn the taxpayer’s interests. I worked in the NASA technology development area for 30 years.(I’m now retired) There are probably two factors at work that make Sonny White evasive.
As some of the of the other comments indicate, this is probably a continuation of work started outside of NASA. Therefore, for NASA to obtain access the IP from the original researcher, they have to signa Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA.) This NDA is reviewed by NASA legal and it binds the NASA employees with access to the IP (and usually contractor employees) from disclosing the IP owned by the original researcher. So Sonny must be tight lipped in his interview with Pop Sci. In these NDA’s, NASA is given the right to used the IP for it’s own purposes, but the orignal researcher continues to own their IP and the potential to patent it. NASA owns any advancement of the technology beyond the original research. This is the other area where Sonny White is within his rights to be evasive.
Government employees are allowed to share in patents on technology they invent even though it is taxpayer funded. If the technology is ever patented, then NASA attempts to find companies to license this taxpayer funded technology and if sucessful the royalties on those liscensed patents flow back into the Agency and the Treasury. This is where the Taxpayer get’s their money’s worth. As an incentive to researchers, the NASA researchers share in those royalties. None are getting rich as far as I know, but it’s enough money to be a nice incentive to be creative and generate original and patentable work. I belive similar policies are in place across the government. This is not just a NASA thing.
The last piece of the puzzle is when to publish the intellectual property so that it can undergo the proper peer review. It turns out that a researcher needs to be careful about the timing of that first public disclosure of the patentable IP because they basically have one year from the first disclosure to apply for a patent. To be patentable, it must be something that can be described and built using tools and techniques available to the researcher. In other words you have to be able to build the widget in order to patent it. So on something that is ground breaking, like warp drive, there is certainly a long way to go before they have all of the discoveries needed to have a patentable device. Therefore, Sonny White (or any other researcher) is going to take the slow road to disclosure to make sure he’s got everything that is patentable figured out before he makes the full disclosure of the IP involved in his project.
Hope this explanation helps.
For NASA to partner under a nondisclosure agreement is reasonable if the development is obviously viable and just needs a little work to get to the stage of being patentable, and NASA ownership and licensing would make it more available to industry than it would be otherwise.
However this is obviously basic research, and it is inconceivable that any findings of the research will even be accepted as scientific without independent verification by researchers with training and experience in physics. NASA should not have signed a nondisclosure agreement because it makes such verification impossible. As to Mr. White, he is free to file a provisional patent and then publish his findings. If he keeps it a secret NASA management has no way to establish whether it should be funded.
The situation is similar in the cold fusion arena. In that field there is at least theoretical reason for hope, but progress has been held up by the lack of free exchange of information.
On a slightly different note, the Popular Science article, like just about every similar article I’ve ever read, has two mistakes – or maybe they’d be better called omissions – which significantly affect any arguments given.
First off, they seem to equate “warp drive” to a single proposed propulsion method, in this case the Alcubierre bubble concept. Actually, Alcubierre is just one of several ideas that have been proposed, and others not yet proposed, that can legitimately be called “warp.” The original concept of a warp drive (unless they’ve changed it while I wasn’t looking) simply means that you move from one place to another by some means other than applying acceleration within a space-time continuum. It has often been described as going around rather than through normal space (whatever that means). That covers a lot of ground (no pun intended). And this is tied into the second, and more basic, omission that bothers me – Einstein space-time.
I have no problems with Einstein space-time itself, but rather how it’s misused. In the laws of thermodynamics there is a key phrase that says, “in a closed system.” All of its laws theoretically apply only to closed systems. However, there are no closed systems (that we know of) short of our entire universe (if even that). What we find, though, is that in “mostly closed” or “relatively closed” systems, if I may used those terms, the laws of thermodynamics work well enough to be considered accurate. But theoretically, their use is flawed because we all conveniently omit that qualifier “in a closed system.”
A similar omission occurs when we talk about relativity. To be absolutely accurate, we should preface every statement about or involving relativity with the phrase, “within a single space-time…,” but we don’t. The difference from the thermodynamics omission, however, is that in the case of relativity the omission can make a big difference in the truth of a statement. Everybody “knows” that “nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.” But that simple sentence is actually not true. It’s true if you add “within a single space-time continuum,” but nobody ever does, and I suspect most people don’t know the difference. If you look at the currently accepted theories about what goes on around the event horizon of a rotating, charged black hole (one of four types of black hole) you’ll see more than one space-time exists, and in one of them objects actually move faster than light speed – relative to objects in the space-time outside of the black hole. So the simple omission of the “within a single space-time” qualifier can completely reverse the truth of a statement.
The Alcubierre bubble concept is an example of another space-time continuum within our own normal universe space-time, not really a “bubble” at all, but bubble is descriptive, so it stuck. Unfortunately, the multiple space-time concept does nothing to help the Alcubierre case. It has much simpler problems that disqualify it from working (my opinion).
Another note about the light speed limit: Einstein’s math doesn’t actually say that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; rather it says that nothing traveling below the speed of light (within a single space-time) can be accelerated to the speed of light through the application of force. In other words, there’s nothing in the math forbidding FTL, there’s just no way to get there from here.
Why did I type all of this boring stuff? Just to make the point that most, if not all, debates and assertions about this subject probably suffer more from incomplete communication than differences in opinion or understanding. Because we so often leave out the important qualifying phrases, what we type is often not what we were really thinking at the time or what we actually believe.
A final thought on FTL/Warp drives — I wonder how they test these things in a lab.
It does seem rather difficult. If the drive worked, would the portion of the lab enclosed by the field suddenly disappear as the Earth moved out from under it?
Or demonstrate a solution to both Fermi’s Paradox and gamma ray bursts?
Political ignorance is bliss.
The administration pushed forward a full blown commercial crew effort to remedy loss of manned space launch. However, the good ole boy network particularly at MSFC, JSC and congress prevented that.This far-feteched project seems to be approved and funded by JSC, although not for certain. Knowing Sonny personally, I’d bet he’d say he was over his head with these media reviews privately in hindsight. He’s a competent individual, but claiming anything more than a Casimir effect is being overly optimistic.The blame for this PR blunder goes to management, particularly at JSC. Where is the blame for John Applewhite and the engineering directorate?
The administration could move to terminate those involved, but we all know how hard it is to terminate civil servants. It may be very well warranted in this case, because there is a strong hint of intellectual dishonesty going on here.
Wow. I’m highly skeptical like 99.999999 % but having said that
Wow…what if it’s true?
The Eagleworks labs website is down as are all the articles about the lab’s works that were up on the Johnson archives site. Here’s the message you get when you try to visit it: “
The NASA technical reports server will be unavailable for public access while the agency conducts a review of the site’s content to ensure that it does not contain technical information that is subject to U.S. export control lawsand regulations and that the appropriate reviews were performed. The site will return to service when the review is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
I think perhaps he’s been in the press a few many times, and is being shut down.
This is a 2012 paper by White and March. Fig. 2 also shows up on a Wikipedia page titled Woodward Effect with an earlier date.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/mee…
what i don’t like is the fact i know all this stuff has to be powered by something like a moray generator because the amounts of energy for the warp drive would be excessive and way above what a nuclear reactor or anything could produce. Such a technology could be used to feed the world by powering indoor farming complex with controlled micro-climate cheaply. Allow our industry to thrive and if there is even a such thing as global warming which i doubt, its also the answer to that. Things like this should be public and would move along a lot faster if they where. If the public funds it and are not allowed to know what it is then to me thats stealing. Its not for national security thats just verbal diarrhea.