http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

A great thing if real. Here's hoping.

RedToo.

I can't help chuckle at the thought that we have had the technology to create an EM drive
for decades but never realized it. Instead we use 'big cans full of explosives' to
propel us into space.

The aliens must be looking at us and saying:

"Really? For Popcorns? That's what they use them for?"

Back off, Desert Eagle. I'm pretty sure that only a very few of us on this forum, if any at all, will ever go into outer space. But how many of us eat microwave popcorn? Show of hands, please?


I rest my case.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a15323/temdrive-controversy/

If it's not in Kerbal Space Program I'm not interested

Just imagine the neat death scene of the astronaut caught in it when it turns on in the next SF horror film!




The Jedi Master

Great stuff.......200 years ago folks figured it was impossible to exceed 1 mile per minute because the human body would lose conciousness

( on second thought this may be true when considering many drivers on motorways/freways )

200? That was before trains, even, Archie. I believe that that misconception was still around in the early 20th Century. But this is why I tend to scoff at those who say that it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, no matter how many letters come after their names. It may be impossible now, but if human history has taught us anything, it's that someone will eventually find a way to make the impossible possible. And then someone else will find a way to use that for war.

Actually, the land speed record was probably held for
about 40 or 50 years by an irish lad who set it by
accident, in 1843, on the original pneumatic railway:

"It is recorded that a young man called Frank Elrington
was on one occasion on the piston carriage, which was not
attached to the train. On releasing the brake, the light
vehicle shot off at high speed, covering the distance in
75 seconds, averaging 84 mph"
Wikipedia, Atmospheric Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway#Dalkey_Atmospheric_Railway

So it was settled 172 years ago.

But ....did he pass out ?? or just "soil his britches ?"