Abd,
It appears may be crossing over into the realm of pathological
skepticism, pathological debunking, as defined here:
http://amasci.com/pathsk2.txt
I know. I can recognize it because I'm often guilty of it myself. 8^)
On Nov 3, 2009, at 3:01 PM, Horace Heffner wrote:
The model by which the device is said to work looks bogus. I think
if they knew why and how it actually works they could produce a
much better W/a ratio.
On Nov 3, 2009, at 8:51 PM, Horace Heffner wrote:
It has nothing to do with anything external. Therefore I think it
is bogus.
Without any apparent knowledge of the field,
on Nov 4, 2009, at 4:52 AM, (you) Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I think it's more than bogus, I think it's a deliberate hoax, a
spoof, a jape.
and then attacked the straw horse, the theory which is likely
incorrect. I provided links to the emdrive.com theory and
experimental background only to provide answers to your questions
about these things because it was obvious from the questions you
asked you hadn't even looked at these things on the web site.
On Nov 4, 2009, at 6:53 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Absolutely, it looks impossible. Sometimes when something looks
impossible, it is!
EM space drives, drives which do not carry reaction mass are
obviously feasible. Photon drives are an example. As you well know,
photons carry momentum p = h/lambda = h/(c nu). Sending light in one
direction pushes on a ship in the other direction. A light based
drive is clearly feasible if a source of energy is available. The
problem of space ships that do not need to carry reaction mass, is
thus not one of feasibility, but one of either overcoming the power
to thrust ratio, 2.94x10^9 watts per kgf of thrust, or of obtaining
enough power from vacuum energy to support the photon beam required.
On Nov 4, 2009, at 7:07 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 04:50 PM 11/4/2009, you wrote:
You are still locked into that reaction mass drive, relativistic
mass increase, have to take all your energy with you paradigm of
thinking.
Absolutely stuck, I'm sure. Locked in. I probably expect the floor
to be there when I swing out of bed in the morning, shows how stuck
I am.
What follows is from:
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/laughed.html
which has some other links of interest.
"...so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone
could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value." - committee advising
Ferdinand
and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that
stones
fell from the sky" - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness
report of falling meteorites.
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy." - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." - Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to
us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876. I'VE HEARD ONE REPORT THAT
THIS
QUOTE WAS A HOAX, THE INTERNAL MEMO WAS A RECENT FORGERY
"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress" - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a sucessful light
bulb.
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about
astronomy." -
Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time.
Nobody
will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison, 1889
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H.
Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. NO, THIS WAS A
MISQUOTE, HE NEVER SAID THIS. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER EVEN DEBUNKED THIS.
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.
"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere."
- Thomas Edison, 1895
"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances,
known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through
the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be." - astronomer S. Newcomb,
1906
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the
war"
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools." - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" - David
Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.
"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't
know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose
will it
serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a
demonstration
of television.
"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists."
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M. Warner, Warner
Brothers, 1927.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932
"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing.
Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine" - Ernst Rutherford, 1933
"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to
dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed
impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished."
Richard
van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's
"Rockets
in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936
"Space travel is utter bilge!" -Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley,
astronomer
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
[ debunked in "The Maverick and His Machine"]
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won't last out the year." - The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"Space travel is bunk" -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of
Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the Unided States." -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"But what... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." - A Yale University
management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not
Gary Cooper." - Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading
role in "Gone With The Wind."
"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports
say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make." - Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields'
Cookies.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M
"Post-It" Notepads.
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our
salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we
went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You
haven't got through college yet.'" - Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve
Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve
Wozniak's personal computer.
"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You
just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable
condition of weight training." - Response to Arthur Jones, who solved
the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981
The following describes Bill Beaty's views on polarized skepticism in
the vortex-l mailing list:
http://amasci.com/weird/vmore.html
"It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative
scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the
preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.
When
this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their
prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them."
- Arthur C. Clarke, 1963"
"So, on Vortex-L we intentionally suspend the disbelieving attitude of
those who believe in the stereotypical "scientific method." While this
does leave us open to the great personal embarrassment of falling for
hoaxes and delusional thinking, we tolerate this problem in our quest to
consider ideas and phenomena which would otherwise be rejected out of
hand
without a fair hearing. There are diamonds in the filth, and we see
that
we cannot hunt for diamonds without getting dirty."
"Note that skepticism of the openminded sort is perfectly acceptable on
Vortex-L. The ban here is aimed at scoffing and "hostile disbelief,"
and
at the sort of "Skeptic" who angrily disbelieves all that is not solidly
proved true, while carefully rejecting all new data and observations
which
conflict with widely accepted theory."
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
