Title: NASA'S SUPER FAST SOLAR SHIP MAY CHANGE SPACE EXPLORATION FOREVER Source:
[None] URL Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f74w2WW17CY Published:Feb 9, 2016 Author:Staff Post Date:2016-02-09 13:38:40 by Horse Keywords:None Views:501 Comments:11
There was no mention of "warp speed" in the video, and the stated speed of 64,000 mph is still slow as molasses in comparison to light speed, which is 186,000 miles per SECOND. In miles per hour, that'd be 669.6 MILLION miles per hour.
As far as being ripped to shreds, there is empty vacuum in space, so there's nothing to rip it.
There was no mention of "warp speed" in the video, and the stated speed of 64,000 mph is still slow as molasses in comparison to light speed, which is 186,000 miles per SECOND.
According to the video, the speed improvement isn't that impressive. He said it would reduce the time to reach the edge of the solar system from 35 to 20 years, so it's not even a doubling of conventional speed. Sure any tech that nearly doubles the speed of a plane, car or boat would be significant, but it terms of space travel, improvements in orders of magnitude are needed to really be a revolution.
Also, seems to me one limitation with this tech is that the direction of thrust is limited to the direction directly opposite the sun. A sail boat can be propelled in a direction perpendicular to the wind, or even partially into the wind, but that's due to the friction of the boat against the water, combined with the wind. Space of course has no substance to create that friction, so thrust can only go in the same direction as the photons. So it would still require help from gravity slingshots for steering.
I read a book once that was written by a nuclear physicist who worked at Los Alamos.
He claimed that he had encountered a landed saucer while walking home from work one evening. He said it communicated with him via telepathy, and that one of things he asked it was how it propelled itself.
The answer was that it projected a magnetic field in the direction it wanted to travel, and that it was sort of like putting a carrot in front of a race horse, it would accelerate to get there but never reach it.