a thought

[lemasquegris]

Watching Discovery WINGS yesterday, they had a thing on the development of the jet engine. Me and Ar's room mate were talking about jet propulsion and space travel. I told him I thought the concept behind a SCRAMJet was cool: using the force of incoming air to increase propulsion. However, he pointed out humans have to figure out a new way to power an object without the use of fuels, otherwise we're never leaving this galaxy.

Off the top of my 3-glasses-deep-into-a-bottle-of-Ravenswood-Zin head, I said "Why not borrow from the MagLev train concept and use the variety of magnetic force to pull and push one across the galaxy. Perhaps one can magnetize a space ship with magnets and we'd just have to figure out a way to enhance the current exponentialy so we could push/pull a ship where it's needed, sort of like a MagLev floating on train tracks. Hell, it's cold enough in space for super-conductivity to be useful.

Amuse me, is there any possibility that planet and galaxy magnetic fields can be harnessed to produced some sort of motion energy? Maybe these magnetic forces make a sound at 1,000,000,000,000 gHz and maybe there'll be something in the sound to tap into.

Hell, it could also recharge one's generator if one could convert it into useful energy. We could use that here on earth...or maybe not...might fuck up the earth's orbital pattern.

Comments

[wurmfood.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem with this is how weak magenetic forces really are. Effectively, there's just not enough ambient magnetic energy to make use of. In fact, if you do the calculations, the Earth's magnetic field is incredibly weak on it's own.

[lemasquegris]

Perhaps it could be amplified somwhow into something that can be useful. I don't know. The only other thing I can think of is combust exisiting outer space elements inside a chamber.

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think you're understanding how just gigantic space really *is*. Earth's magnetic field is actually either very weak or very strong depending on how you look at it (it is, after all, our magnetic field that makes life capable here on earth, otherwise we would have been irradiated to shreds by solar radiation before evolving into more than one-celled creatures.)

The Sun itself creates a ton of magnetic fields, some of which we're having a lot of trouble understanding. It's a minor hop of 93 million million miles away to Earth. It's a vast distance from there to the edge of the solar system, and that's nothing compared to the huuuge expanses of space between the sun and the nearest star system.

Because the actual physical amount of space is so large, any magnetic waves that, say, the core of the galaxy or anything large enough to really throw out powerful energy, would mean that the magnetic fields would be so diffused to be practically unuseable, sadly.

That's not to say your theory lacks any weight - merely it wouldn't work in very conventional means. I don't have enough of a science background to argue it either way, but I think it's that kind of thinking that would be very useful...if I am making any sense at all.