New Engine Might Allow Humans to Move at Speeds Close to Light
There is a problem with our desire to travel to every location and see everything when it comes to space. a serious issue. Well, it's space. It's much too large.
It would take us years to reach our nearest neighbour star, even if we travelled at the fastest rate the universe permits.Finding answers to significant issues is a different human motivation, though
David Burns, a NASA engineer, has been spending his free time working on it. Without the need of propellant, he claims his engine design could hypothetically accelerate to 99 percent the speed of light.
Burns depicts a box with a weight inside, threaded on a line, and springs at either end bouncing the weight back and forth to illustrate his concept.
The result of this would be for the entire box to wiggle in a hoover, such as space, with the weight appearing to be stabilised around it, like a gif.
Generally, the box would continue to wiggle in the same location, but if the weight's mass increased just in one direction, it would produce more thrust in that direction.
This shouldn't be entirely conceivable, according to the conservation of momentum principle, which states that a system's momentum stays constant in the absence of any outside forces.
Burns' drive, however, doesn't have a single closed loop. The term "helical engine" refers to its helical shape, which resembles a stretched spring.