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The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (BPP) is a research program which was funded from 1996 through 2002 by NASA, in the hope of studying various proposals for "revolutionary" methods of spacecraft propulsion which would require breakthroughs in physics before they could be realized, hence the name. Specific proposals studied under the aegis of the BPP included the diametric drive, the pitch drive, the bias drive, the Alcubierre drive, the disjunction drive, and the differential sail. 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Alcubierre metric. ...
Diametric drive
The diametric drive was a speculative proposal for an "engine" which would create some kind of "asymmetric field" around itself. It was alleged that in such circumstances, the side of the field which creates more force on the spacecraft will accelerate the spacecraft in the direction of the force. (It should perhaps be added that even in Newtonian gravitation, something as humble as a rod or disk could be described as having an "asymmetric gravitational field", in the sense of a field which is not spherically symmetric, and any irregularly shaped object would be expected to create a field which has no symmetries, so the foregoing description of how this diametric drive was supposed to work, even in theory, obviously leaves something to be explained!)
One idea for realizing this concept involved hypothetical particles with negative mass. Exotic matter is a hypothetical concept of particle physics. ...
Stability issues, it was alleged, might arise. A huge constant acceleration without need for fuel or reaction mass is certainly an attractive idea, but equally undeniably, sounds suspiciously like such scientifically dubious notions as free energy or perpetual motion. The free energy is a measure of the amount of mechanical (or other) work that can be extracted from a system, and is helpful in engineering applications. ...
This article or section should include material from Parallel Path See also Perpetuum mobile as a musical term Perpetual motion machines (the Latin term perpetuum mobile is not uncommon) are a class of hypothetical machines which would produce useful energy in a way science cannot explain (yet). ...
Disjunction drive The disjunction drive was another highly speculative proposal, which has been described as possibly creating a field which would be somehow "disjoint" from the object that created it. It should be noted that there is nothing in mainstream physics to suggest this is possible; indeed, from this description it is impossible to understand exactly what the idea behind this proposal is.
Pitch drive and bias drive One proposed method of achieving a "diametric drive", or possibly a "disjunction drive", which was allegedly studied in the BPP was called the pitch drive. This has been described as involving a hypothetical "disjoint field" which, it was claimed, would eliminate the need for the field to be generated on the spacecraft itself.
One specific proposal for such a pitch drive was allegedly called the bias drive. According to this proposal, if it were possible to locally alter the value of the gravitational constant G in front of and behind the craft, one could create a bias drive. It might help to point out here that while the gravitational constant is indeed a fundamental physical constant in our current gold standard theory of gravitation, general relativity, its best known competitor, the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation, does in a sense allow for a locally varying gravitational constant, so the notion of a locally varying gravitational constant has been seriously discussed in mainstream physics. It has been claimed that one problem with the concept of a bias drive was that it might create a singularity in the field's gradient located inside the vehicle, but this "objection" appears to be as speculative as the proposal itself. According to the law of universal gravitation, the attractive force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. ...
For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to General relativity. ...
In mathematical physics, the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation (sometimes called the Jordan/Brans/Dicke theory) is a well-known competitor of Einsteins theory of general relativity. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
Alcubierre drive The Alcubierre drive, also called the warp drive, is a proposal, originally due to the physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which consists of a toy model of a Lorentzian spacetime with properties somewhat reminiscent of the fictional "warp drive" from the science fiction series Star Trek. In the semipopular literature, this proposal has often been described as having the status of an exact solution of the Einstein field equation, but this characterization is wildly misleading. It has also been claimed that the Alcubierre drive is grounded in a well-established physical effect, the Casimir effect, which is currently understood in terms of quantum field theory, but this is also rather misleading. See Alcubierre drive for more information. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Alcubierre metric. ...
Miguel Alcubierre (Born 1964) is a Mexican theoretical physicist. ...
In differential geometry, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is a smooth manifold equipped with a smooth, symmetric, tensor which is nondegenerate at each point on the manifold. ...
Star Trek collectively refers to an American science-fiction franchise spanning six unique television series (which comprise 726 episodes) and ten feature films, in addition to hundreds of novels, computer and video games, fan stories, and other works of fiction — all of which are set within the same fictional universe...
// In general relativity, an exact solution is a Lorentzian manifold equipped with certain tensor fields which are taken to model states of ordinary matter, such as a fluid, or classical nongravitational fields such as the electromagnetic field. ...
In physics, the Casimir effect is a weak force exerted between separate objects, which is due to neither charge, gravity, nor the exchange of particles, but instead is due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects. ...
Quantum field theory (QFT) is the application of quantum mechanics to fields. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Alcubierre metric. ...
Differential sail The differential sail was another speculative proposal, which appealed to the zero-point energy field. As the Heisenberg uncertainty principle implies that there is no such thing as an exact amount of energy in an exact location, vacuum fluctuations are known to lead to discernable effects such as the Casimir effect. The differential sail apparently was a speculation that it might be possible to use the cosmic background radiation to create some kind of light pressure gradient which could be used to push on some kind of sail. In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess; it is the energy of the ground state of the system. ...
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg (December 5, 1901 – February 1, 1976) was a celebrated German physicist and Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. ...
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle or just uncertainty principle (sometimes also the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle - a name given to it by N. Bohr) is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. ...
In the description of the interaction between elementary particles in quantum field theory, a virtual particle is a temporary elementary particle, used to describe an intermediate stage in the interaction. ...
In physics, the Casimir effect is a weak force exerted between separate objects, which is due to neither charge, gravity, nor the exchange of particles, but instead is due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects. ...
See also This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ...
Burkhard Heim (from Heim Theory by Illobrand Von Ludwiger) Burkhard Heim (February 9, 1925 – January 14, 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. ...
External links - Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. (Marc Millis explains on this page that NASA has not sponsored this project since 2002, but he apparently hopes to reinstate funding.)
- "Breakthroughs" commonly submitted to NASA - These are ideas that do *not* work, but are often submitted to NASA anyway.
References - Marc G. Millis, The Challenge To Create The Space Drive, 1997, Journal of Propulsion and Power.
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