mercredi, juillet 20, 2005

Pensée bouleversante

Does Reverse Engineering (of ET Technology) Work?



Reverse engineering is the process of analysing a finished product of an unknown technology and creating replica or similar, which presupposes finding an appropriate manufacture process.

According to what many in the world believe, one of the most coveted technologies of reverse engineering is the propulsion system of extraterrestrial UFOs. The rumours say that both civilian and military projects, which watch the extra-terrestrial UFO flight patterns and characteristics and possible contacts, seek to reverse engineer the navigation and propulsion systems, which assumedly involves anti-gravity and very high speeds.

One of the possible and relatively successful results of the backtracking of alien technology, if they really exist, might be the idea of Ion thrusters, which uses beams of ions for propulsion, taking advantage of the high charge-to- mass ratio of ions to accelerate. They reduce the amount of reaction mass required but increasing the amount of power required, so that, in comparison with traditional chemical rockets, they have greater fuel efficiency but they are generally constrained to very low thrusts by the available power. In other words, they are very slow to pick up speed, but over the long haul they can deliver 10 times as much thrust per pound of fuel.

There are several kinds of ionic propellers, one of them is the electrostatic thruster that emit ionised atoms of xenon (producing an eerie blue shine). Nasa’s Deep Space 1, which was launched on the 24th of October of the year1998, used this kind of propulsion system.

Plasma or Hall effect thrusters constitute a different and even more perplexing type of advanced propulsion, in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field in a plasma discharge with a radial magnetic field. This kind of system uses electrons to accelerate the ions to produce thrust, and neutralise them ions in the plume. The former Soviet Union had already developed the concept of a Hall thruster into an efficient propulsion device and had used it for decades for station keeping. Now he European Space Agency 's satellite Smart 1uses it as well.

A third kind of Ion thruster is the Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP ), which, according to science fiction, is the closest to the principle of Flying Saucers. It uses liquid metal (usually either caesium or indium) as a propellant, and consists of an emitter and an accelerator electrode. A potential difference on the order of 10 kV is applied between the two, which generates a strong electric field at the tip of the metal surface. The field extracts ions, which then are accelerated to high velocities, typically more than 100 km/s. A separate electron source is required to keep the spacecraft electrically neutral.

Officially, these systems have been under development since the 1950's. But the amazing progress in the field almost seems a science fiction text, and the suspicion that it somehow grew out of Reverse Engineering labs gets less implausible day by day.

posted by Tony Marmo @ 4:37:00 PM