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Recently Retired USAF General Makes Eyebrow-Raising Claims About Advanced Space Technology
Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space. While military leadership rattling the space sabers is nothing new, Kwast's lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever. Is this mere posturing or could we actually be on the verge of making science fiction a reality?
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Recently Retired USAF General Makes Eyebrow-Raising Claims About Advanced Space Technology
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday December 16 2019, @01:26PM (10 children)
That just sounds like SpaceX's concept for Starship point-to-point transportation or some other suborbital scheme.
The Navy definitely wants compact fusion, for use on sailing ships if not in Navy "UFOs". It remains to be seen whether fission or fusion rockets could launch from Earth's surface, but it could be more immediately useful if deployed after reaching orbit (high specific impulse).
No sign of China vs. U.S. EmDrive discussion [soylentnews.org] (maybe it's linked). That is probably a point in TheDrive's favor.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 16 2019, @01:54PM (4 children)
Ummm... is not "what" or "how"? "Developmental" doesn't compile in the context, maybe this is MIC-speak?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @02:35PM (3 children)
I expect it just means the technology is sound. Not that you build it, unsure if it'll work, and go from there.
Like others have mentioned, it's probably just a reference to something like (if not precisely referencing) SpaceX's suborbital transport system. Never really thought about it but military probably will be some of the first consumers. They would place a high priority in super-rapid transport from A to B and don't especially care about costs. At scale you're talking the complete obsolescence of crew transport systems. Could even change the entire paradigm of military "deployment."
Would bet, a lot, Musk had considered this long before deciding to push forward on this.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 17 2019, @05:21AM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:35AM
It is the standard trade off in warfare. If you can't do something better, do more of it. If you can't make a single object capable of reliable interception of those, then just shoot more than one interceptor. For an example of such a philosophy, look at the CIWS or CRAM, where multiple projectiles (sometimes in the thousands) are used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @07:46AM
In general warfare, that's not even scratching the surface. Russia has now developed technology [popularmechanics.com] to create directed artificial and unimaginably massive tsunamis using underwater nuclear detonations that there's no practical way to stop. Imagine a 300 meter tsunami traveling miles inward and consuming New York City. Oh yes, the tsunami's waters would also be heavily radioactive. Unlike a missile blast you could see it coming. The detonation would set off detectors worldwide. And we'd be able to see the tsunami coming, potentially from hundreds of miles away. Nonetheless, there'd be absolutely nothing to do about it. Everything within miles of the coast is going to be under hundreds of meters of radioactive water in less than an hour. Effective evacuation would be impossible.
This is why the saber rattling is so unbelievably idiotic. It's in denial to the basic reality of the world today and that's that no "developed" (read: nuclear) nation has any chance of militarily coercing any other developed nation. Something to consider on any political leader that wants to take a 'hardline' stance on 'belligerent' nations. The political leaders will be fine in any nuclear scenario. They have nice super safe bunkers, and will be flown out of any potentially dangerous regions within seconds of reasonable concern. And for those of sufficient narcissism (more than abundant among high level politicians), they will leave a legacy that will never be forgotten.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday December 16 2019, @02:37PM (1 child)
The EmDrive was coupling to the earth's magnetic field: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/nasas-em-drive-is-a-magnetic-wtf-thruster/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @04:44PM
That's ArsTechnica, which is increasingly equivalent to saying - that's clickbait.
The actual story there is that a group that has nothing to do with NASA nor had any particular insight into their tests (beyond what was publicly published) chose to run an experiment to see if they could also replicate the EM Drive. In their experiment they failed to properly shield their equipment and found they were generating a thrust from their own power cables acting like a very weak electromagnet. They published as a possible explanation and as a guide for others seeking to replicate the EM Drive on things to avoid. Ars (and a number of other media outlets) then spin this into 'The EM Drive was [insert often brutally butchered paraphrasing of German experiment]'.
After NASA replicated and published the EM drive the next obvious step, and one that's not even all that expensive now a days, would be to shoot an EM Drive into orbit - ideally on some sort of a trajectory outside our magnetosphere and test it. Instead, they went completely dark. That almost certainly means the project has been classified. Makes sense as well. The EM Drive probably does not work, but it sure is trying its damnedest to claim otherwise. And if by some chance it somehow does, it would radically change the world.
Something that always bothered me is that it supposedly generated thrust in linear proportion to input. The problem there is that kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity. In other words the EM drive would seem to imply infinite energy. Even if that were not the case, you do have a device that could now accelerate things (even if over very long periods of time) to relativistic velocities. That introduces, at the minimum, the ability for humans to engage in intentional time-fuckery, to use the technical term. And beyond that you can now also do things like create world-busters. A baseball going at 0.9C becomes a nuke, and there's a linear scaling in strength against the mass there. But anyway you look at it EM drive = world gets really really weird.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Monday December 16 2019, @06:10PM (1 child)
The Navy doesn't have a lot of sailing ships, and even so the Constitution is pretty old already.
I don't know about the UFOs.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 16 2019, @08:36PM
I just mean ships that travel on water, not spaceships or some shit.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @07:58PM
Currently, we can deliver a payload to anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or less. The Ballistic Linear Acceleration Massdriver (BLAM for short) can deliver a payload inside a specially designed shell that has a 90% on target rating with 78% overall survivability of the payload (breakdown of supplies and personnel survivability not available).