From (by) RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net (email me there please)… This is a sub-site
to main site at www.rocketslinger.com …
This web page last updated 02 February 2024
Proposed
Versions of Quantized-Inertia Drives
Abstract
This sub-page to www.ResearchGate.net (at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377926730_Proposed_Versions_of_Quantized-Inertia_Drives
) is duplicated at www.rocketslinger.com also (at http://www.rocketslinger.com/Quant_Inert/ ). This
is purely speculation and internet research here. No experimental drives were produced or
tested, by the author of this paper. The
history (and current status) of IVO’s quantized inertia drive (and a somewhat
similar, earlier “EmDrive”) are VERY briefly discussed. Both methods attempt to violate Newton’s laws
of action and reaction (as conventionally understood), by deriving thrust
WITHOUT sending reaction mass (or conventional energy) backwards. The “EmDrive” proposed to use a cavity in
which microwaves were bounced back and forth.
What is proposed here is to bounce gas
molecules back and forth instead. At one
(leading) end of a long cylinder (or other shaped enclosure), gas is heated on
the hot side of a Peltier device (or more simply, an electrical heater). The cold side of the Peltier device, if used,
resides outside of the gas-cavity (chamber) thrust device. This cold side can be used to cool a
spacecraft structural frame, or have its “coldness” shed (passively or
actively) into other destinations.
The hot side of the Peltier device (or other
heater) inside the gas-filled thrust-reaction chamber is located at the leading
edge of the reaction chamber (pointed towards the direction in which we are
travelling). Since the gas molecules here
are HOT, they bounce off of the hot plate at high rates of acceleration. According to theories of quantized inertia,
the highly accelerated (hot) bouncing molecules should carry lots of inertia,
and therefor produce high thrust.
At the other (rear, “downstream”, or
travel-direction-lagging) end of the gas-filled reaction chamber, the cold side
of another Peltier device touches the cavity-held gas. The hot side of the device interfaces to the
vacuum of space, where it may shed photons (as infrared heat waves) to impart a
slight amount of extra thrust. The
gas-touching cold side of the lagging Peltier device here will bounce gas
molecules back towards the hot end of the propulsion gas cavity. Since there will be a temperature gradient
between the two ends of the chamber, the cold (rear) end will be bouncing cold
molecules forward with lower acceleration (and hence, less inertia and less
“anti-thrust”) than the hot end. If theories of quantized inertia are correct,
this design should work.
Variations and details of the above are
discussed here; However, the above summarizes the
essence of what is described here.
Doubling up quantized inertia thrust functions with compressors and
expanders (as used in active refrigeration or heat-pumping functions, and
thermal management in general) is also discussed.
Contents
Preamble, and Bits of Boilerplate
Basic
Design, With Some Implausible Variations or Features
More-Plausible
Variations or Features
Gas
Compressors and Expanders Which Double Up as QI Thrusters
Preamble, and Bits of Boilerplate
As before, as with
other sub-pages of www.rocketslinger.com, the intent here is to “defensively publish” miscellaneous ideas,
to make them available to everyone “for free” (sometimes called “throwing it
into the public domain”), and to prevent “patent trolling” of (mostly) simple,
basic ideas. Accordingly, currently-highly-implausible or
speculative design ideas (frequently marked as such) are sometimes included,
just in case they ever become plausible, sometimes through radical new
technology developments (often in materials sciences).
Dear Reader,
excuse me as I will often slip out of stilted formal modes of writing
here. I have no boss or bosses to please
with these “hobby” writings of mine, so I’ll do it my way! I’ll
often use a more informal style from here on in, using “I”, “we”, “you”,
etc. “We” is you and me. “You” are an engineer, manager, or other
party interested in what’s described here.
Let’s thwart the patent trolls, and get ON with it!
PS, if some of my speculations are
wrong (based on mistaken assumptions), please email me at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net, and note that I’m open to co-authoring articles, even if they
are short, as in, corrections or updates to this article, for example. If you send comments, please specify whether
or not you’re open to having your name mentioned (up to and including being
named as a co-author) in any follow-up article(s).
More-Specific Introduction
The
history of a drive without reaction mass includes the “EmDrive”. Seem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive for a
summary. Detailed testing (as I
understand such things) seems to say that it doesn’t work. For a brief comparison between the EmDrive
and what is proposed here, see the abstract above (in this paper right here).
Now (as
of February 2024), many of those of us who avidly follow space exploration
eagerly await the results of the IVO Quantum Space drive, based on theories of
quantized inertia. There are many
articles “out there” on the internet, but, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), the
very best link that I can provide (especially for people like me, who like
intuitive explanations) is as follows: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ivo-quantum-drive-in-orbit-tests-will-start-after-establishing-a-baseline.html … There, you can read about Unruh effects
(Unruh radiation), a Rindler horizon, and other terms
which you can use to conduct your own internet research. I don’t plan to do much of that here, nor do
I plan to attempt to tackle much if any math here. I would like to add that both “quantized
inertia” theories and MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics ) may
drastically reduce (or eliminate) the need for so-far-unproven “dark matter”
theories. But don’t confuse “quantized
inertia” v/s MOND… They do both claim to explain how and why spiral-armed galaxies
like our own Lovely Home, the Milk Way, cling together, instead of (fairly) rapidly
getting their spiral arms all smeared out.
They (MOND v/s QI) are, however, different animals! Again, I’ll leave interest parties to do
their own research.
The
take-away (from “QI” quantized inertia theories) for us, as practical
propulsion engineers, is that at higher rates of acceleration, matter has
higher inertia, and at lower rates of acceleration, matter has lower
inertia. So how do we go about
exploiting this theory, to derive propulsion?
Using only energy (in space, from solar power, or on-board RTGs (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator ),
nuclear fission, or nuclear fusion), and NO reaction mass? That’s what all of this (below) is all about!
Simple Basic Design Here
The
simplest, starting design here has already been described in the abstract
above. Let’s just go ahead and dive
right in, and provide a drawing as a basis for discussion.
Figure #1
The above
drawing is intended to be intuitively arranged… Think of a rocket lifting
off. It is powered by two Peltier
devices (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling ), which
are in turn powered by DC electrical current derived from solar or nuclear
power. Only energy (and no reaction
mass) is required, if the “quantized inertia” theory is true. The internal (hermetically sealed) gas cavity
(“gas chamber” is a bad phrase, for obvious reasons!) has a temperature
gradient, since it is heated at the leading (top) edge and cooled at the
lagging (bottom) edge. The gas molecules
“duke it out” with one another in the middle zone, to establish this
temperature gradient, whenever the Peltier devices are powered up. In this middle zone, gasses will press
equally on all sides of the shape (assume a cylinder shape, for example),
imparting zero lateral (sideways) thrust.
(This does, however, assume that we do NOT have strongly different
temperatures from one side-surface of the cylinder to the other, which could
result, for example, from strong sunshine on one side v/s shade on the
other.) Hot gas molecules will
experience high acceleration forces as they “bang into” the top hot plate, which
means a high inertia for these molecules, imparting a high QI thrust. This high thrust will be “fought back
against” at the bottom cold plate.
However, colder molecules (of gas) there will be bouncing against the
cold plate with lower accelerations (less “delta V”), and hence, lower inertia,
and lower thrust. A net upwards thrust
should result, if the “QI” (“Quantized Inertia”) theory is true. For brevity, we can start calling our device
a “QI Thruster”.
Note that
Peltier devices can be reversed (the heat-flow direction of the device can be
reversed) simply by reversing the direction of the DC electrical current
flow. This can be done with what electrical
engineers call an “H-bridge”. The
H-bridge can use electromechanical switches, which do have moving parts. A break-before-make DPDT (Double-Pole
Double-Throw) switch could be used. Or,
avoid the moving parts, and use solid state devices, such as FETs (Field Effect
Transistors), in a properly optimized design.
If, above, both Peltier devices were reversed, the direction of thrust
would be reversed, assuming that the whole “QI” theory is true. Full thrust reversal would involve a time
delay before the thermal gradient (inside the gas cavity) fully reverses.
Note that
if “QI” theory is NOT true, then our here-described QI thruster is some sort of
close relative to the long-sought but perpetually-out-of-reach, forbidden
“perpetual motion machine”! A conventional
explanation for why the here-described machine should NOT work is as
follows: Yes, the cold-end gas molecules
hit the cold plate at lower speeds and at lower accelerations (less “delta V”),
PER EACH MOLECULE!!! However, since the
colder gas molecules crowd each other more densely (compared to the hot end),
there will be MORE of the cold molecules banging into the cold plate, balancing
the gas-forces on the hot-end plate… In
the absence of validity of the QI theory, that is!
The
cylinder can be made of any suitable material, such as (perhaps) aluminum or
stainless steel. It needs to be
gas-proof, of course.
The gas
might be xenon or krypton, for some of the same reasons that these gasses are
used for deep-space ion drives. That is,
they are large molecules, with lots of momentum (and hence, reaction thrust). Also, larger molecules are easier to
contain… They don’t “sneak through tiny
holes” in your container, like hydrogen or helium will.
I do have
many questions that I can’t answer (help me out, Dear Reader, if you can, at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net ). Would there be any significant advantages
(besides materials costs) to using an inert medium-sized molecule such as
nitrogen? Or would it be advantageous to
use a MIX of, say, nitrogen and xenon or krypton? Would the larger and smaller (heavier and
lighter) molecules tend to segregate when this device (“QI Thruster”) is
powered? If so, would that help or
hinder us? If a mix is desired, what is
the desired ratio? Would it even be a
good idea to add a small amount of water vapor?
Water vapor would likely help to cause corrosion, I suspect. Are there any other decent candidate
materials (in whole or in part) for the gas used here?
It might
be possible to use a “phase change” gas or “working fluid” here, such as Freon,
ammonia, or hydrocarbon gasses, for examples.
I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that for this particular
instantiation (as shown above), for this particular application, shooting for a
temperature-induced “phase change” (between liquid and gas) would lead to
entirely too chaotic and unpredictable results.
Using liquids instead of gasses might also be possible, but I doubt that
this idea would be practical. For one
thing, liquids are typically much heavier than lightly-compressed gasses.
All sorts
of specific questions arise about where and how such devices (“QI Thrusters”) would
be used. Will they be used in the inner
solar system, where solar power is plentiful, but dumping waste heat may become
more troublesome? Or will they be used
“far out”, in the deep dark yonder, where nuclear power becomes a more
attractive choice? Can we dump “excess
cold” (not enough heat) from the leading edge, to help cool a nuclear
reactor? Heating the tip in cold-cold
environments seems intuitively wise to me, since the leading (top, above)
Peltier device might otherwise flounder for lack of ANY heat to be pumped to
the hot side! Many trade-offs and
choices may be obvious, but I’ll try to cover the simple and easy choices here
below.
Fairly
importantly, please note the following: The immediately-above-described problem
of super-cooling the (top) tip as shown in Figure #1 (and accumulating a
too-large thermal gradient across that top Peltier device) has a simple
solution: Replace that entire Peltier
device with a simple nickel-chromium heating element. A too-cold tip here would typically be a
problem only in very cold environments (think outer solar system and-or a
deeply shaded side of a spacecraft), where extra heat is welcomed. So just use a simple heating element, then,
and be done with it! The design (at
extra costs of mass and complexity) could even include both a Peltier device
AND a heater element, here, for flexibility.
Dear
Reader, please excuse my disorganization!
Why don’t we do the following:
Discus fairly simple variations (some not highly plausible or practical
at all, in my opinion) on the above, as is shown in Figure #1. That will be the section immediately
below. Then we’ll get to more-plausible
variations, which fairly radically differ from the above drawing (we’ll need more
drawings). Then perhaps we can return
for ANOTHER round of less-plausible variations on those! My intent is two-fold here: 1) To fend off “patent trolls”, should the
implausible ideas become plausible, and 2) To stimulate the minds of readers,
to perhaps find solutions to the problems posed, or to find or devise other,
more-plausible ideas. Let’s proceed…
Basic Design, With Some Implausible Variations or Features
“Dear
Reader” is invited to skip this (perhaps boring) clearly-labelled section if
desired. This section is included in the
name of thoroughness (completeness), and provoking thought among any readers
who are deeply interested in gory details and considerations.
First
off, in any reasonably cold environment, we can derive a tiny bit of extra
thrust by emitting heat-rays (infrared radiation) from photons being emitted
out of the bottom of the “QI Thruster”.
Sure, it’s not much, but it MIGHT be worthwhile to add insulation to our
device (“QI Thruster”), to “steer” excess heat that way. (Photons have no mass, sure, but they do have
momentum, as I understand. So photon-based propulsion is possible, albeit weak.) I suspect that the wise choice here is to add
SOME moderate amount of insulation, especially if the thruster will be deployed
in the inner solar system, where sunlight-versus-shade could add stresses to
the (presumably metal) gas-cavity enclosure.
That is, strong thermal gradients (and temperature cycles) might
otherwise cause metal fatigue, differential expansion and contraction, and-or
other problems. So…
Moderate insulation for basic structural protection? I say “yes”!
Deliberately added EXTRA insulation-protection to enhance our “photon
drive” propulsion? I say “no”! It’s not worth the extra mass! (But I have enough humility to confess that I
might be wrong.) It’s an easy drawing to
provide, so here’s where the insulation would go:
Figure #2
The above
drawing hardly deserves any extra comments, so let’s move right along…
All the
inside surfaces (along the length of the gas cavity, where, when activated, the
QI thruster develops a temperature gradient) should be as smooth as
possible… No unneeded roughness,
texture, bumps, fuzz, “hair” of any kind, and certainly no gas-movement-restraining
baffles or membranes! Why? Because on the HOT side of ANY obstructions,
the gas molecules will “bump” into the obstruction (rebound from it), with a
higher acceleration (“delta V”) than on the colder side, which is exactly the
opposite of what we want, if we want our “QI thruster” to work. That seems simple to me.
Intuitively
I believe (I could be wrong) that, since the “gas laws” dictate that all of the
gas molecules in a mixed gas will move with the same AVERAGE kinetic energy,
regardless of the mass or size of the given gas molecule, yet the VARIATION in
kinetic energy (and with it, speed) of the smaller (lighter) molecules will be
greater (compared to larger and heavier gas molecules), that there just MIGHT
be some sort of “cheat” available to us here!
(Double-check my understanding here if desired; I’m too lazy, for now,
to gather very many links about the preceding).
Well OK then, just 1 link, see Figure 6.9 here: https://opentextbc.ca/introductorychemistry/chapter/kinetic-molecular-theory-of-gases/ .
If we
could somehow “cheat” and cause the heavier molecules to congregate at the hot
surface, forcing the lighter molecules to congregate at the cold surface, it
seems to me that we’d (probably) get a lot more QI thrust (differential between
the hot and the cold plate). This is
simply because the heavier molecules have more momentum (and inertia). On the other hand, my bias towards momentum
may be incorrect; For QI thrust purposes, the higher speeds (and the higher
“delta V”) of the bouncing faster, smaller molecules (and their kinetic as
opposed to momentum energy) may prevail.
So if we COULD somehow easily sort the gas molecules, would we want the
larger (heavier) ones at the hot plate or at the cold plate? I don’t know! If you know and care to share, please email me
at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net .
Placing a
membrane (or baffles or “other”) obstruction in the gas cavity is
self-defeating for QI thrust purposes, as described slightly further
above. So that (membranes or similar) “solution”
looks unattractive as a “fix” for what we may want to do, here.
Recall
“gas diffusion” with different isotopes of uranium, in uranium hexafluoride
gas? For sorting
isotopes of uranium? In this
approach (unlike what we want here), the uranium hexafluoride gas starts out at
one end of the gas cavity, and is NOT continuously (gas-molecules-wise) sorted,
in one un-interrupted cavity. The gas
diffusion is a one-way, one-shot deal.
For us to adapt it for our purposes (where we would need a constantly
maintained sorting process), we’d have to add “gas centrifuges” to sort our
heavier versus lighter molecules, which seems ENTIRELY too “Rube-Goldberg-esque” to me! (Too many moving parts).
Not to mention that uranium hexafluoride is a VERY nasty,
hard-to-handle, corrosive gas! But see
the following link concerning the above, and also note that semi-permeable
membranes are used here, which (as we discussed already) get in our way, for QI
thrust: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Processes/UraniumSeparation/gaseous-diffusion.html .
Now
suppose that we forced our heavier molecules to congregate at the hot end of
the gas cavity with magnets or electromagnets?
For that to work well, we’d need a heavy gas (molecule) that reacts to
magnetic fields. Is there such a thing
as “iron hexafluoride” gas? Or some equivalent large GAS molecule that reacts to magnetic
fields? I, sad to say, have NOT
been able to find one! Only at extremely
cold temperatures can I find ANY “ferromagnetic” gas!
Ferro
fluid (liquid) may be a way to go (replace the gas cavity in our QI thruster
with a liquid-filled cavity). NOW we
could have heavy ferromagnetic particles in our liquid (not gas) fluid! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid . As previously mentioned, liquids are
typically far denser (heavier) than gasses, and mass (in space vehicles) is
utterly precious! So this may not be a
good way to go… But it would be one way
to attract larger molecules (using magnetism) to a selected surface, in our QI
thruster.
Again,
see Figure 6.9 here: https://opentextbc.ca/introductorychemistry/chapter/kinetic-molecular-theory-of-gases/ , where
we can see that (in a mixed gas), most of the lighter molecules have higher
speeds than the heavier molecules, even though the temperature is uniform. Is the same thing true in a liquid? My research tells me generally “yes”, with
caveats concerning intra-molecular forces, which are FAR more significant in a
liquid, than in a gas.
Assuming
that all of this would work (QI theory, ferro-fluids,
and magnetism), then would we want to place the
(permanent or electromagnetic) magnet(s) close to the hot surface or the cold
surface? I’m not sure! This has been discussed (in the context of a
gas) elsewhere in this paper. Find it
using search-string “On the other hand, my bias towards momentum may be
incorrect”…
Another
method might be to suspend iron-containing (or other ferromagnetic) dust
particles in our gas. To keep the dust
suspended in the gas, sound, ultrasound, microwaves, radio waves, or other
disturbing forces might be used, somehow.
I think that ultrasound would be a reasonable choice. However, I believe that no matter WHAT we did
in this scenario, the dust (due to Van der Waals forces; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force ) would
slowly but surely accumulate the dust (on walls, etc.) in the least-disturbed
areas of our QI thruster apparatus.
I have no
optimal solution here (for sorting molecules or particles for deriving or augmenting
QI thrust). If you have one, and care to
share, I can be contacted at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net .
More-Plausible Variations or Features
Please
excuse me if at times this paper seems to be “stream of consciousness-style”
written, but this avenue or method may assist the reader’s ease of
understanding the ideas that I intend to convey, if modifications and
variations build upon themselves sequentially.
Next, I
want to take the above two drawings, and show that, if they are stacked
end-on-end (or otherwise arranged, with fluid-flow “plumbing” in between
elements), that they can have two modes of operation. This assumes a SMALL modification, in that
each Peltier device has a fluid-flow valve (actively opened or shut) added to it. 1) If activated as previously shown in
figures #1 and #2, with Peltier devices all activated at the same polarity
(with the state of the fluid-flow valves preferred to be CLOSED), then the
“stacked” QI thrusters all continue to act as QI thrusters. This should be intuitive, so no additional
drawing is provided, for that use-mode.
2) If the stacked end-on-end
fluid cavities are arranged physically the same as before (with no moving parts
added, other than the valves), and the Peltier device polarities are
alternately “flipped” (via DC current polarity, for heat-flow in alternate
directions), then the fluid flow can be “milked” in a motion analogous to
“peristalsis”. This motion will negate
any “QI thrust” effects… However, it
would force one-way flow of a fluid, which could be used to circulate
temperature-moderating or heat-spreading fluid-flow through a spacecraft. One (in this scheme here described) would
have to choose one mode of operation, or the other, not both… QI thruster mode, or
heat-circulating fluid-flow mode, at any one given time.
Dear
Reader will forgive me (please?) for pointing out the obvious, but hot fluids
will expand towards cooler cavities, when gated this way, with no moving parts
other than controlled fluid-flow valves.
The
“milking” or “quasi-peristalsis” motion requires TWO different activation-modes
of the SAME elements (otherwise used as QI thrusters), so TWO different
activation-mode-drawings are shown of the same stacked elements below.
Figure #3
Figure #4
The above
feature (in my opinion) isn’t of much value.
The fluid-flow-forcing feature won’t be very strong (powerful), and is a
bit of a “power hog”, in that Peltier devices require a fair amount of
power. This feature, however, wouldn’t
be hard to provide. On a spacecraft in
flight, “do-overs” are difficult! So if
there’s SOME possible value to a feature…
You never know when you might need it…
If it’s not too hard (expensive, complex, massive) to provide, then
adding it might be worthwhile. Also note
that other physical (including plumbing) arrangements could be used to provide
the above feature. Again, a likely use
would be to circulate fluids to moderate temperatures throughout a spacecraft,
in this mode, and, this mode is NOT compatible with deriving QI thrust! Also again, note that in QI thruster mode,
all of the (newly added here) valves should be closed.
Next,
let’s forget about “stacking” the QI thrusters (and turning them into a pump
assembly) as shown in figures 3 and 4, and go back to figures 1 and 2, where
one lone QI thruster is shown at a time.
What refinements might be made to this simple starting design? One idea that comes to my mind is to segment
the Peltier devices into slices looking like flower petals or pizza-pie
slices. If the slices are individually
controllable (turned on or off, or halfway in between), then the below-shown
arrangement could facilitate steering, while using the QI thruster. QI thrusting will be very weak to begin with,
and so steering would be very weak and slow as well. I’m just trying to cover all of the “angles”
here as I think of them. The below
design modification MIGHT also help alleviate any mechanical interface stresses
between the Peltier devices and the gas-cavity walls, and sharp corners on the
gas-cavity walls, as caused by thermal cycling, metal fatigue, differential
thermal and expansion contraction, etc.
Manufacturing curved Peltier devices MIGHT possibly be more trouble than
it’s worth, so the “pizza slices” of Peltier devices might be mechanically
segmented, even though each “slice” would be electrically controlled (powered)
as one.
For
simplicity, the leading-edge (or top, tip) Peltier device is simply replaced by
electrical heating elements. Curving
such heaters is trivial. We’d still want
them to be pizza-pie-segmented, though, if we want steering control.
Figure #5
The above
drawing implies that 6 (six) segments are used in the (individually
controllable) segmented heater elements here, although that number could be set
differently. The Peltier device at the
bottom could be segmented also, but I don’t think that it would be worth the
trouble to design it this way. How the
individually controllable segmented heater elements could assist “steering”
should be intuitively obvious.
The
following comments may be obvious.
Design choices (and tradeoffs) can be made concerning just how many QI
thrusters are used. Think of some
(usually larger) spacecraft festooned with many compressed-cold-gas thrusters,
for movement and for attitude control.
Many or all of them MIGHT be replaced by QI thrusters, if low thrust
capabilities (and slow maneuvering speeds) are tolerable. Note that if both ends of a QI thruster use
Peltier devices (no simple heating elements allowed in this case), the QI
thrust is reversible (as was mentioned before).
Compressed-cold gas thrusters can’t do this, and so, here is an
advantage of the QI thrusters, if they work in the first place! That is, reversible
thrusters allows one to reduce the number of maneuvering thrusters that
are needed.
The hot
and cold tips of a cold thruster could be directly attached to a spacecraft to
help cool or heat the skin and-or frame of the spacecraft (or antennae, or
solar collectors, nuclear reactors, RTGs, etc.). QI thrusters can pull double duty, assisting
in thermal management, that is. These
ideas should be obvious. OR, we could
actively “pump heat” around, using a working fluid (such as Freon,
hydrocarbons, ammonia, etc.), and gas compressors and expanders. This is what was implied far above in Figures
1 and 2 at the top-tip of the QI thruster, with the labelled “cold module” and
the comments about forced “cold outflow” or “heat inflow”. Thermal management in a spacecraft is
obviously a “general” concern, though, and not a concern only when QI thrusters
are used! Wouldn’t it be nice if we
could design gas compressors and expanders that would pull double duty as QI
thrusters, though? That leads us right
into the next section!
Gas Compressors and Expanders Which Double Up as QI Thrusters
The gas
expander is the simplest case. Hot (or
at least hotter) compressed gas enters our expander at the top. It losses compression (and becomes colder)
and emerges as a colder gas at the bottom (in our drawings). Now, the expander could be simply a thick
chunk of not-too-permeable, but still gas-permeable, foam or filtering
material! Think of the foam and-or
fibers in a cigarette filter, for example.
If (as in our drawing here) we want our QI thruster to thrust (move)
upwards (like a rocket lifting off), then this is exactly what we want! Each bouncing gas molecule (in the thermal
gradient of the gas moving though the permeable filter) bounces back (downward)
off of a hotter finite upstream element of the filter. As the gas and the filter both cool towards
the bottom side (of the entire gas-expanding filter), the bouncing gas
molecules hit (on the average) the
cooler, downstream finite elements of the filter, experiencing less
acceleration (“delta V”) as they bounce back upwards, against the prevailing
direction of the overall gas flow. If QI
theory is correct, a simple gas-flow-impeding filter should give us a tiny bit
of thrust.
Note that
there is a HUGE difference between this just-now-discussed scenario, and the
earlier one (simple design of a QI thruster), and that is that the expander
(filter in this case) experiences constant gas flow in one direction, and the
simple temperature-differential-QI thruster does not. In one case (the simple QI thruster), we want
no barriers to free gas movement. In the
case just now described (the gas expander), the device is ALL about gas-flow
impediments!
A random
jumble of fibers, or foam bubbles with holes in them, in our filter, will work,
sure. Couldn’t we do better than that
(for QI thrust), with an intelligently designed filter? Engineering on the “nano” scale would be
best, I think, for less mass and volume…
The “micro” scale would be second best.
I can’t speak intelligently to such matters, so I’ll describe what I
think might work pretty well, more towards the assumed “macro” end of the
engineering scale.
The below
drawing can serve as a starting basis for our discussion. The temperature gradient can get pretty
confusing… “Hot” v/s “Cold”? Are we talking within each GAS layer, one
side compared to the other? Or within each structural-divider to another? A profusion of labels should help,
below… Below shows
many-many parallel dividing (gas-flow impeding) structural layers (with holes
in them to allow impeded gas flow), and many-many layers of gas.
Figure #6
If I
understand correctly, and if we want QI thrust, then the BLUE
(bottom) layers of the baffles should be thin layers of metal, such as
tinfoil, aluminum foil, copper foil, or gold foil if you can afford it! Metals are shiny and thermally conductive,
and so (I think!) that they’d bounce the gas molecules backwards most
effectively. This will be for bouncing
the gas molecules downwards most effectively (efficiently) for QI thrust. The metal will soak up the ambient heat, and
shed it (bounce it) right back. The RED (top,
hotter) layers of the baffles should be the bare (thin but strong)
structural support for the thin metal foil.
It could be a good quality, hard and durable plastic, or perhaps “G10”
Fiberglass material. As a thermal
insulator, such a bare material should NOT bounce the gas molecules backwards
quite as strongly. This, I think, is what
should be done for optimizing “QI thrust” here.
If I’m wrong, please email me at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net … That same (email me
please) remark also applies to the below somewhat-speculative set of comments
as well.
Bear with
me for a moment to see how this is relevant here, but please refer to the
child’s toy (or physics-teacher’s toy) which has propeller blades painted black
on one side of the blades, and white on the other sides of the blades. Under no influences other than strong visible
lighting, the propeller will rotate! See,
for example, https://phys.org/news/2010-06-classic-children-toy-tiny-motor.html , “Researchers Turn Classic Children's Toy Into Tiny Motor”. See
also “Radiometer” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometer . Parsing
all that I read here, it seems that GAS TEMPERATURES vastly (VASTLY!) overwhelm
“bouncing back photons” effects. So for
QI thrusters, we should pay attention to bouncing gas molecules, and (mostly) ignore
the photons. However, that being said,
we should take whatever we can get!
There will be SOME heat-waves photons being bounced around here. See “black body radiation” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation , for example.
So (grasping at whatever small value we can extract from the photons) we
should take the bare RED (top, hotter) layers of the baffles that are
thermally insulating materials, and paint them WHITE, or mirrored, or otherwise
reflective of light waves, especially to include infrared heat waves. Now the heating photons will be bounced back
upwards (by the shown-above-as-RED which has been painted WHITE, or reflective),
to heat the BLUE layers of the baffles, to increase our QI thruster
effect. That’s my analysis, at
least. I could be wrong, though. Enough of that, for now at least, for sure!
I do
believe that the above-described design for a passive (unpowered) gas expander
is a good (practical) design, if QI thruster theory works in the first
place. Note that if we want to adjust
thrust for maneuvering, reversing the above device doesn’t look to be at all
practical. We could, however, in our
thermal-management system (heat pumps, refrigerators, air handlers, etc.)
interconnect elements (or groups of elements, to not only include gas
expanders, but pumps and compressors as well) using flexible hose
interconnections. Now these elements or
groups of elements could be swiveled around for manipulating thrust
vectors. QI thrust may perhaps be so small
as to make this idea impractical… But
there it is, in the name of thoroughness!
And for fending off patent trolls!
I don’t
care to speculate very much about what type(s) of pumps should be used here, or
about how to design them to create at least SOME amount, hopefully, of QI
thrust… With the exception of ONE set of ideas as described below!
Trying to
keep it brief and simple, now, the idea is centered around
using Peltier devices embedded into rotating compressor blades and-or “turbine”
(gas expander) blades. There are several
options open to us, for us to use to wirelessly transmit power to these moving
(blade-mounted) Peltier devices. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer for a
summary. Note also that if our powered
compressors and expanders use “ducted fans”, short-range versions of wireless
power transfer should work very well, transferring power from the walls of the
ducted fans, to the tips of the fan blades.
For ducted fans, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducted_fan . Another option (for power transfer) would be
to use carbon brushes, but they wear out.
A compressor of this (rotating blades) kind should be enough to force
our fluids to circulate (no extra pumps should be needed). And keep in mind that Peltier devices can be
reversed, so our “QI thrusters” (in the form of Peltier devices with hot and
cold sides exposed on opposite sides of the blades) could be reversed.
Intuitively,
I believe that (in order to be useful for thermal management) the fluids being
pumped around, here, would have to move so fast, that “thermal gradients” in
the fluids between blade surfaces would get so smeared together, so quickly,
that QI thrust (already tiny!) would become even more ridiculously tiny! An “out” or “cheat” here might be to activate
this kind of QI thruster only when the rotating parts are NOT rotating (when no
heat-pumping or air-handling is being done).
This would “crimp our style” pretty badly, for what kinds of practical wireless
(or other) power transfers are available to us.
My best stab at a solution here would be to wire DC power through wires
in the central axis (of a rotating bladed compressor or expander) only when it
isn’t spinning. Connect and disconnect
the power with a specially designed mechanical contact switch, at one end of
the axle.
The
following link may be of interest and relevance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboexpander … When we’re pumping heat around, the gas
expander side can yield back up to us, some of the (fluid-flow) power that we
had to put in on the compressor side.
“Plumbing”
(fluid-flow ducts or plenums) in thermal management might also double up as QI
thrusters. Place Peltier devices (or
mixes of plain electric heater elements and Peltier devices) on opposing
surfaces of the ducts or plenums, in areas where volumes are large (and hence
fluid-flow rates are low), there aren’t too many twists and turns in the
passageways, and “laminar flow” prevails over “turbulent flow”. After all of the discussions and drawings
above, more explanations and drawings (concerning this) shouldn’t be needed.
I suspect
that more drawings here (to illustrate the above few paragraphs) aren’t really
needed… However, I can fix it if the above isn’t clear! As usual, email me at RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net if the
need arises.
Concluding Remarks
Well,
I don’t have anything (that’s not obvious) left to say. So it’s time to quit! I, for one, am sure hoping that “QI theories”
(of Quantum Inertia) can be exploited!
And now I quit!
Back to main site at www.rocketslinger.com … Send
comments or corrections to RocketSlinger@SBCGlobal.net please…
References (none
for now)