Trans Quantum Inertial Drive

[TheBigDog]

Well, I have been mulling over my Space Voyage story for some time now. I even spent some time writing, but I have always been hung up on the research. I want to write plausible fiction, but the facts of mass and energy with regard to even our most optimistic technology keep getting in the way. So I have reached into my bag of imagination and come up with a drive system that I hope does not break any physical laws, but still enables space exploration to happen. I call it, for lack of a better name, Trans Quantum Inertial Drive, and I present it here for whatever constructive feedback on the idea I might get.

 

We begin with a magical material. Our trans quantum material. It seems very ordinary and its specifics are subject to whatever dramatic license I pick later, but it does have the secret ingredient for the drive system. It has mass X, and can be in the typical states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. When stored in a plasma state with the proper catalyst and in the presence of a strong magnetic field there is a measurable drop in the mass, and when the magnetic field is removed, so returns the mass. By controlling the structure of the catalyst and the strength/shape of the magnetic field this drop of mass becomes more extreme. Now you must note that the "lost" mass is being suspended as energy carried by way of the catalyst and magnetic field. When the conditions are removed that energy is either turned into heat or returned as mass to the plasma.

 

So how does this work? Take a flywheel with the outer edge constructed of the plasma and the catalyst in a precisely engineered fashion. Now have that flywheel passing through a powerful electromagnet similar to how a brake disk passes through the caliper. This magnet would encompass 180 degrees of the flywheel. An electric motor spins the flywheel. The electromagnet is turned on. Like magic the flywheel exerts a force away from the magnet. Energy is required to make all of this happen, but all that is required is electrical energy. The amount of drive force is limited only by the physical forces that the moving parts can sustain. From a practical sense I imagine physical constraints to the efficiency that would prevent free energy.

 

So, I am continuing my story based upon this drive system. And as I considered the drive system I began to reach some startling conclusions. The speed of light is about 300,000,000 meters per second. At an acceleration of 10 m/s it would take just under a year to reach the speed of light. Now, because the drive is actually mechanical, you would never reach the speed of light. As you approached the speed of light and time slowed the rate of acceleration would slow equally, while to an observer on the ship the acceleration would appear constant. As you get very very close to the speed of light each second on board the ship would represent years of travel from the perspective of the starting point. In theory you could travel to any point in the universe while experiencing a time elapse of just two years; one year accelerating and one year decelerating. And virtually the same amount of energy would be required to take a trip of any length. Or you could simply traverse between local star systems completing dozens of trips within a lifetime.

 

The beauty of the idea is it requires no huge quantities of propellant, and it lets us experience the full travel experience that Special Relativity allows. Space launches happen almost silently as the ship revs up the Trans Quantum Inertial Drives and slowly rises away from the surface of the planet. As the gravitational pull of the earth weakens the acceleration increases. Tilting the trajectory can slip you into orbit if you like, or you can simply keep on going. You want to carry more? Strap on more drives.

 

Well, that is the idea. What say ye, Hypography?

 

Bill

[CraigD]

Hi Bill! :) Good to see you back – it’s been a while! How've you been?

 

On your "trans quantum inertial drive" propulsion idea: it’s a reactionless drive. These are the conversation of mass-violating counterparts to conservation of energy-violating perpetual motion machines, and are physically impossible. Like perpetual motion machine schemes, it’s possible, but not necessary, to analyze the scheme in detail to find a physical law violation – you can look at the entire system “from the outside” to see that it violates conservation of momentum, and is thus impossible.

 

The scheme might be saved by altering it to avoid the conservation of momentum violation. Let’s say that you “magic” material doesn’t have classically alterable mass in your description, but rather has a large fraction of its particles in a quantum superposition of state. Further, suppose that those particle were produced in complementary pairs, one of each pair in the flywheel, one elsewhere – in space, on a planet, etc. Now, in place of your magnetic field, a measurement of the momentum of each particle is made – something involving very precise laser rangefinders, perhaps – biased in such a way that you get a propulsive effect. The each entangled particle, then, has an opposite momentum, so conservation of momentum is preserved.

 

I’m suspect the quantum no-cloning theorem – which prohibits ansibles – prohibits even this scheme, but it’s a more subtle prohibition than conservation of momentum, so if not truly physically possible, at least it’s harder for a moderately educated reader to figure out – which gains a few points on the soft vs. hard SF scale, at least in my book. ;)

 

As best I’ve been able to figure it, if you want a physically possible spacecraft propulsion scheme that’ll let you accelerate at 1 g over interstellar distances, you’ve got to get around the “cold (rocket) equations” by not carrying your energy and reaction mass supply in your vehicle. Such “Beam-powered propulsion” schemes involve big devices at origins and destinations – lasers, particle accelerators, etc – and a vehicle that’s pushed by their beams. Near-term systems use the beamed power to heat reaction mass carried by the vehicle, so are still somewhat constrained by the rocket equations. Far-off ones are pure “sail pushers”. The Forward light-sail system, which I mention often in these for a needs a pushing laser only at its origin, not its destination.

 

Every seriously developed beam-pushed system I’ve seen is designed for less than 1 g acceleration – Forward’s fictional “Promethius” spacecraft, for instance, accelerated at 0.01 g and decelerated at 0.1 g – but I can think of no reason in principle that such a system could not be upgraded to produces 1 g or greater accelerations.

[TheBigDog]

Thanks for the insightful reply, Craig. It has been a long time. Things are very well here at the Benton house.

 

Yes, this is an idea for a reactionless drive. Originally I wanted to use entanglement as the basis for the drive, but then I was watching something about string theory and they commented on the concept of the interchangeability of matter and energy. That gave me the idea to approach it in this fashion.

 

In a nutshell, this is the fictional theory upon which this drive works...

 

There are currently two sets of physical laws. The size of an object determines what set of physical laws are applied. We only have the crudest of capabilities when it comes to observing and understanding the quantum laws. We have very very precise capability when it comes to observing and understanding the relativistic world. At the border between quantum and relativity is the ability to make strange things happen and to effectively violate the laws of the observable relativistic world. Thus the way the drive works is this... the plasma is composed of particles at the quantum/relativistic borderline, but existing in the relativistic world. The magnetic field causes the plasma to behave in such a way that a portion of it becomes "pseudo electrons" by changing the resonant frequency of the atoms. Those pseudo electrons flow through the catalyst making it act like a battery holding the lost mass as huge electrical charge. The charge can be returned from the state of being "pseudo electrons" to being part of the plasma through a controlled reversal of the magnetic field.

 

Lucky for me science fiction doesn't need to obey all the known laws of physics, it just needs to make a reasonable explanation of the unknown and create an excuse for people to believe in the fantastic.

 

Bill

[TheBigDog]

Has is really been two years since I posted here? Maybe I need to start a new topic....

[CraigD]

Has is really been two years since I posted here? Maybe I need to start a new topic....

:) Wow! Great to see you back, Bill - I've missed your space SF/science stuff terribly!

 

So what's new with you?

 

My personal imagined future history of spaceflight is still built around the beamriders I was posting about 2 years ago - the idea doesn't have any quantum magic in it, and requires gigantic space engineering, and was entirely plagarized from Robert L Forward, but I remain convinced it's fundamentally sound. Now, if I'd just write a decent story about it...

[TheBigDog]

Good to talk again, Craig. I think I might stick around for a little while. This has always been a good place to sort out some thoughts.

 

Yes, the story is always the trick. I got so bogged down in the fictional science that I never got to the drama and characters. And of course that is where the story really lives. I want to start with a simple story that obscures the layers complexity underlying. Each subsequent story will fill in some blanks while open views to deeper mysteries. Doesn't that sound terrific! Now all that is left is the simple task of getting it all onto paper. How hard can that be?

 

And in other news, life has been good to me. Just finished an epic vacation with the two youngest boys. 8040 miles and 20 states in 22 days. I was even in Turtle's neck of the woods.

 

But this is about the old Space Voyage, so I will make at least a little effort to stay on topic.

 

I like the autonomy of a spaceship being self powered and self directed. All we have to do is sidestep some inconvenient laws of the physical universe using some hypothetical quantum trickery and we are off to the races. I want to write the technology almost like a conspiracy theory where there are enough threads of truth woven in that you can cling to them while ignoring the impossibilities that they are convincing you are possible. The beauty is that I believe some of these things will ultimately come true, we just have not figured out how to make our science violate our current understanding of reality.

 

More tomorrow. I have to get to bed.

 

Bill

[TheBigDog]

The theory of the Trans Quantum Drive is written by an assistant to Nicola Tesla. But the technology did not exist. This originator of the idea leaves the documentation that becomes part of a family folklore. An amusement. Three generations later while going through the documents of the estate an equally brilliant great-grandson sees the truth in the old documents and picks up on the theory where the originator had left off. With advancements in science and technology he realizes that the dreams of his ancestor are almost within reach and dedicates his life to making them a reality. He will see the fruit of his labor in his later years. His children will complete his work and live the adventures of the novels. Much of the simple back story I have just described will be leaned later as the story fleshes out for the reader, who will be in a time frame near the completion of the first functional drive in the first story.

 

Bill

[TheBigDog]

The man who conceived the idea of the Trans Quantum Inertial Drive was more fortunate than his master and managed to acquire for himself a minor fortune from his own inventions and endeavors. In his later years he purchased a large property in Ohio, over 3000 acres of wilderness with a sizable tributary to the Grand River running through it. The property was never fully developed aside from a spartan log house and a mill pond to generate power. For many years the property was held by a trust and the lineage of ownership was unknown to the family. The trust rented much of the property out to hunters to pay the taxes. When the later generations rediscover the work of their ancestor they are contacted by the firm which controls the trust and given ownership of the property. This gives them much greater access to the lost research of their ancestor, but also adds a layer of mystery, as they find themselves playing out the scenario that he seems to have predicted for them (Foundation-esque). This property will become the base of operations for the first home built space ship, and will be to space exploration what the Wright brothers were to powered flight. This feat is not without risk, not without sacrifice, not without blood spilled, and not without glory. And it is that ride which the reader will experience through the characters of this book.

 

We will be introduced by a character who is hired to create a documentary about their work. As he learns about their work and their history, so does the reader. And along the way he becomes a part of the work, of the research and eventually no longer the passive observer, but the very heart of the experiment and the success. This will be the central character for the first story. And this will be the character who discovers the next layer of the story which will be the focus of the next book(s).

 

I am making these notes publicly to try and leverage myself to keep working at it. I do welcome any comments of questions as I move through this thought process. If anyone is actually reading this that is.

 

Bill

[TheBigDog]

I am using a technique called "the snowflake method" to help me organize my ideas into a cohesive story. I like things that are visual and logical, so it is right my alley. And for those ancients around here who remember some of my fractal work, you will appreciate how it appeals to me on that level as well.

 

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: “A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul.” (This is the summary for my first novel' date=' Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

 

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal. It’s the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

 

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

 

Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.

No character names, please! Better to say “a handicapped trapeze artist” than “Jane Doe”.

Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.

Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.[/quote']

 

Quote is from AdvancedFictionWriting.com

 

So, my next post will have my single sentence that describes my book. To bed for now!

 

Bill

[CraigD]

Getting the science close enough that hard SF lovers can bear it, yet having characters and events fantastic enough that any other reader can endure it, is IMHO the essential challenge of technological SF.

 

With helping you to that end, then, here are some ruminations on reactionless spaceship motors:

 

Reactionless spaceship motors are equivalent to ideal (frictionless) traction motors. That is, if there were an infinitely strong cables running through where you are (eg: Earth) to where you want to go (eg: a planet of another star), and you had a mechanically perfect windlass, you’d be able to make the same trip, using the same energy, as a ship with a 100% efficient reactionless drive.

 

Given the maximum speed V of the ship of end mass for the trip M (just ‘cause the ship doesn’t use reaction mass doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to start the trip with more mass than it ends it with), and ignoring friction with the interstellar medium, its energy requirement to reach that speed E is easy to calculate:

 

[math]E = M c^2 \left(1-\left(1-\left(\frac{V}{c}\right)^2\right)^{\frac12}\right)[/math]

 

Finding V for a given trip distance and constant acceleration is harder to calculate, but can be ignored for now.

 

So, if V = 0.99 c, [math]E \dot= 0.8589 M c^2 [/math]

 

For M of about 10000 kg (including crew and cargo), then E is about 10²¹ J, about the total electric energy artificially generated on Earth in the past 20 years.

 

The point I’m going for here is that, even with a reactionless drive and some way of avoiding friction with the interstellar medium, near lightspeed requires a lot of energy.

 

If we require the ship be “self-contained” in the sense of carrying its energy, it’ll need a very high-energy density fuel. By the presently well understood laws of physics, the best possible is equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Assuming a 100% efficient matter-antimatter powerplant, our 0.99 c ship would have to be about 85.89% fuel. Assuming it needs to decelerate to about its initial velocity at trips end, it’ll need to be about [math]1-(1-0.8589)^2 \dot= [/math] 98% fuel.

 

These sorts of mass ratios are pretty similar to present day rockets – not very “autonomous”, in the sense that a sailboat is.

 

Worse, assuming even a small ship, the minimum energy requirements to create all that antimatter is daunting.

The best present-day antimatter making technology is about 0.00001% (10^-7) efficient, so our previous example’s 10²¹ J for a 100% efficient antimatter factory increases to 10²⁸ J, which is about the amount of solar energy the Earth gets in 2000 years. Assuming you don’t want to wait millennia to make your fuel, we’re talking about giant space factories here.

 

So if you want autonomous starships without giant space factories, you not only need a reactionless drive, but some sort of “free energy” power systems.

 

Free energy isn’t more far-out SF than reactionless drives. I deem it less far-out – unlike reactionless drives, which can at best presently be imagined as operating due to some utterly yet undiscovered quantum mechanical effect, there’s well-known theory, supported by experimental evidence such as the Casimir effect, suggesting that, in principle, such energy can be gotten from ordinary vacuum.

 

Nonetheless, if I were writing a story around a Tesla-like way-outside-the-box-and-mainstream-industry genius engineer protagonist, I’d be tempted to skip the reactionless drive part because of its need for either a large mass ration ship and giant fuel factories, or barely-conceivable free energy systems, and imagine my protagonists has built a large-scale quantum effect device that can move a ship arbitrarily far in arbitrarily little time with arbitrarily little energy input – say “quantum translocation” rather than “trans quantum inertial”. If the story is set in our actual history, containing not just Nikola Tesla but Douglas Adams, it’s safe to assume some story character and a reasonably well-read reader would take to calling it “the infinite improbability drive”, no matter its official name. :)

 

Decades ago, I wrote a short story (long lost in paper files) along these lines, involving a car-size starship powered by a single 9 volt battery, mostly to challenge the idea that, given truly beyond-present-day-conceivable-science engineering, you’d necessarily need great booming starship engine rooms (like those shown in most space opera SF), and also to playfully but seriously make the point that, from a reliability standpoint on individual human time scales, a box of blister-packed COTS 9V batteries is a pretty hard-to-beat energy source for an critical low-power engine.

[TheBigDog]

I am afraid I am going to have to make the readers suspend just enough disbelief that they don't do too much math.

 

I did have another idea in which the discovery would be true "anti-gravity" where the same way magnets are drawn together by opposite poles and repel at like poles, the "anti-gravity" would create a "like pole" to the earth and be forced away. Then as you begin approaching another large body you let gravity draw you in a the proper angle before pushing off by activating the anti-gravity. In this way you would navigate your way through the universe like a billiard ball doing a fancy trick shot from body to body. Maybe I will include some of that later on somehow.

 

The Trans Quantum Inertial Drive is best visualized mechanically. The trans quantum material can have its mass, and therefore its inertia, changed with the flip of a switch as it passes through a specialized field. So imagine a piston going back and forth in a tube. I accelerate it one direction pushing a mass of 10 kg. I then push it the other direction pushing a mass of 5 kg. As I oscillate it back and forth simple Newtonian physics shows that I would generate a greater inertia in one direction than in the other. I then make up a rule (fiction is great this way) that the energy it takes to run the Trans Quantum Drive is greater than any energy you can get out of it by rigging it into some sort of mechanical generator. The benefit is that it generates directional thrust without ejecting mass. If I have these engine modules as things I can bolt onto a ship then all I need is a power plant big enough to provide a decent amount of acceleration in one direction, and then like the magic of compound interest, you start to achieve really high speeds. If my power plant is a nuclear reactor similar to what the Navy uses for ships, then I have a good power plant for decades long romps through space. I can translate the wattage of the power plant into a thrust vector and apply it to the total mass of the ship. Then it is just a matter of letting the speed build. It doesn't take too long until you start reaching relativistic speeds. And then all sorts of strangeness kicks in.

 

There is also an underlying story about what I would call, "cycles of intelligence" which plays into the discovery, and the ramifications. But more on that later. I am a long way from that part of the story.

 

I never stop being amazed at the research you put into your posts, Craig!

 

Bill

[CraigD]

Oh, what fun stuff this is! :)

 

I am afraid I am going to have to make the readers suspend just enough disbelief that they don't do too much math.

This is dangerous ground if you’re striving to write reasonably hard SF. Not at all if you’ve accepted you’re writing pure space opera, but I’m pretty sure you mean to keep your SF as hard as possible without bruising the brains of your readers, Bill. ;)

 

Accelerating ordinary matter – people and spaceships – to near lightspeed while ignoring the energy requirements is a common failing in SF. A common way to avoid this problem, and the other big problem with such high speeds, how to avoid incineration from friction with between-the-starsstuff, is to just avoid such high speeds – keep everything under some practical speed, like “Tau 0.5”, 0.866 c. If you story depending on tiny Taus (like in my old favorite, Tau Zero, where the characters outlive the rest of the universe), though, that’s out. The most common solution I’ve to the problem in that case is the one used in Tau Zero: a Bussard ramjet, where the power available for avoiding incineration increases at the same rate as the power threatening it.

 

I’m pretty sure you don’t want to trot out anything as old-hat as a 1960s Bussard ramjet, though – so take the above just as a Touretts-like spewing of my personal SF history. :)

 

I did have another idea in which the discovery would be true "anti-gravity" where the same way magnets are drawn together by opposite poles and repel at like poles, the "anti-gravity" would create a "like pole" to the earth and be forced away.

The big problem with this is that all scientific theory and evidence to date strongly indicates that it’s just plain impossible. There are still a few ongoing experiments that might overturn this, but they’re ongoing mostly because of lack of interest and funds to get them done faster, the lack of interest mostly because nearly everyone is near certain they’re not going to overturn current theory. My grasp of why theory so strongly indicates this is weak, but my sense that it does pretty sure.

 

The idea that some sort of stuff – conventionally called “negative mass” or “exotic matter” could exert a repulsive gravitational force on ordinary matter – has a much better scientific status of “barely a clue how to make it, but nothing seems to say it’s impossible.” The “clue” part has something to do with the Casimir effect, which pops up a lot in speculation about very advanced space travel.

 

Some SF I much enjoyed (eg: the Bio of a Space Tyrant series) has built fictional technology around the idea not that gravity could be reversed, but that it could be blocked, diffused, or focused like light. Since modern physics is largely mute on what, fundamentally gravity is, I’ve not seen much actual science on the plausibility of such a technology, but to this SF reader, it feels plausible.

 

 

The Trans Quantum Inertial Drive is best visualized mechanically. The trans quantum material can have its mass, and therefore its inertia, changed with the flip of a switch as it passes through a specialized field. So imagine a piston going back and forth in a tube. I accelerate it one direction pushing a mass of 10 kg. I then push it the other direction pushing a mass of 5 kg. As I oscillate it back and forth simple Newtonian physics shows that I would generate a greater inertia in one direction than in the other.

I like that - it’s a neat twist on the old SF (perhaps mostly SF gaming) idea of an “inertial nullifier” that reduces the mass of the ship so that an arbitrarily small rocket can accelerate it at a desired rate and duration (eg: 1 g for the entire trip), and a refreshing departure for the muddled idea I’ve seen (and in my misguided youth, pursued and promoted) of a reactionless drive involving big gyroscopes.

 

You might get some SF traction by hinting that the TQID’s “special field” has something to do with the Higgs interaction – in short, that it causes the massive gauge bosons – mainly the gluons – in ordinary matter – to behave as predicted by quantum mechanics without the Higgs interaction, and have zero mass like the massless gauge boson, the photon. This even suggests a catchy name for the device: a “Higgs nullifier”. :)

 

I then make up a rule (fiction is great this way) that the energy it takes to run the Trans Quantum Drive is greater than any energy you can get out of it by rigging it into some sort of mechanical generator. The benefit is that it generates directional thrust without ejecting mass.

You might do better not to make this rule, or fictionally hint at a theory that the mass-changing field is a power source, getting energy from the Higgs field in the “switch off” part of its cycle.

 

Otherwise, your story is afoul the terribly high energy requirements I outlined in my previous post:

...even with a reactionless drive and some way of avoiding friction with the interstellar medium, near lightspeed requires a lot of energy.

 

If I have these engine modules as things I can bolt onto a ship then all I need is a power plant big enough to provide a decent amount of acceleration in one direction, and then like the magic of compound interest, you start to achieve really high speeds. If my power plant is a nuclear reactor similar to what the Navy uses for ships, then I have a good power plant for decades long romps through space.

Again, if the ship is propelling itself using its own stored energy, classical physics (including Relativity) shows a naval fission reactor is many orders of magnitude too low power for its mass. I can’t see any physically realistic way to avoid my point

... you not only need a reactionless drive, but some sort of “free energy” power systems.

 

It’s helpful – though, like most classical mechanics, a bit of a mental workout – to consider the mechanics of the TQID.

 

First important point: Assuming it’s “elastic” – doesn’t transfer energy when its piston reverses direction (a good quality spring will come close to this, and a present day superconducting magnetic linear accelerator will achieve it 100%) – the TQID’s only power requirements are the initial push to get the piston moving. After that, it should spring back and forth (or turn on an axle, if you prefer – the mechanics can be made to work either way) with no additional energy in. Without its mass/inertia-changing field, of course, it’s just like a big, fancy desk toy, and won’t push a ship anywhere.

 

Next important point: the TQID with its extraordinary mass/inertia changing field in effect is mechanically equivalent to an identical ordinary machine with some device to add and remove mass from the moving piston without changing its velocity. Imagine quick, tiny cargo spaceships loading the hollow piston full of mass just in time for it to bounce off the front end of the cylinder, then unloading it just in time for it to bounce off the back end. All the energy is being used by the little spaceships, and the unloaded mass is identical to (or perhaps to 2 times) the reaction mass that the ship would expel if it had a rocket motor with exhaust velocity the same as the speed of the piston.

 

So making the TQID scientifically plausible just requires a fictional explanation of what the tiny quick cargo ships in this metaphor actually are. Since they’re already a source of “mass-energy from nowhere” in the form of mass, I don’t see any reason to prohibit them of being one for mass-energy in the form of the energy needed for them to repeatedly change the mass of the piston, making it not just an apparent conservation of mass violator, but conservation of energy violator, too.

 

Given that the latest in-the-news, Nobel prize-winning thoughts on “getting mass from nowhere” are about the Higgs mechanism, maybe you scientist/engineer protagonist should have an old Scottish camping buddy of Peter Higgs in addition to an assistant to Nicola Tesla.

[TheBigDog]

Craig,

 

I like your description of the tiny cargo ships. They are the "Trans Quantum" part of the drive. Another way to imagine it would be a transporter on Star Trek. In one direction you have a high mass piston you are pushing. After it rebounds at the end you transport mass out of it so on the return trip you are pushing a lower mass. After it rebounds you transport the mass back in so you push the high mass again. Only instead of tiny spaceships or a transporter, the mass of the cylinder is simply being fluctuated as the field is adjusted. The parts are always all there, but at a quantum level the constructs are adjusted so the amount of physical matter and mass changes at the instruction of the machine. It is almost like having some of the mass step between parallel universes in how it functions. I plan on writing more this weekend.

 

Bill