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Perhaps some of ACTers will find this conference interesting... One of the talks: "Would Einstein be on Twitter? Exploring the potential and limits of Web 2.0 in science & science communication" [Edit] Oh, I see someone has already posted this link... a year ago. Anyway, if anyone of you plans to go, let me know - I'll be around ;-)

Just came back from ESOF 2010... I was on look for ACT agents undercover, but either they were not there or the cover was good enough... Anyway here's a few remarks from me (I could write a nice report... if you paid): 1) In general, to say that ESA was underrepresented on the conference as a whole is not enough (I guess ESA just failed to notice the event taking place). For instance, on the GMES presentation, ESA as such was not mentioned at all... at some point I started to wonder if ESA is actually involved in the project, but now I checked the website and apparently it is. On the other hand, GMES presentation was crap anyway, as after 1:15 of talking, I didn't gain any knowledge of what GMES is and what its contributions to the EU community will be. 2) There was a lot of talk about LHC and particle research (well, at least among those that I attended). Some of them were very good, some of them rather crap... 3) "Would Einstein be on Twitter? Exploring the potential and limits of Web 2.0 in science & science communication" talk - quite interesting, but focusing mainly on Science-to-Wide Public and Science-to-Journalists communication. Not really on Science-to-Science (as in Ariadnet). There was quite an extensive discussion with the public. You may be interested that Nature is trying to stimulate Web 2.0 communication, running blog service, but also I think a kind of social network - perhaps you'd like to have a look. In general the conclusion was that Web 2.0 is not so useful for scientific communication because practising it requires TIME (blogs, etc.) and often some professional skills (podcasts/videocasts, etc.), and scientists have neither of these. This can be run on corporation level (like ESA does actually), but then it looses the "intimate" character. 4) "How much can robots learn?" talk... very nicely presented: understandable by the wide public, but conveying the message... which is something like "we can already make the robots do stuff absolutely imp

Well, my comment was cut in half, and I don't feel like typing it again... the most important highlight from the rest is that the only presenter from ESA (ESTEC) did not show up on his talk because his department was undergoing some sort of audit on the same day :)

Fantastic comment - or better report!! thanks very much Marek! Who was the supposed no-show speaker from ESA?

I would be very very skeptic on this results and am actually ready to take bets that they are victims of something else than "new physics" ... some measurement error e.g.

Assuming that this system is feasible, and taking the results of Chinese team (Thrust of 720 mN http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/06/emdrive-and-cold-fusion), I wonder whether this would allow for some actual trajectory maneuvers (and to which degree). If so, can we simulate some possible trajectories, e.g. compare the current solutions to this one ? For example, Shawyer (original author) claims that this system would be capable of stabilizing ISS without need for refueling. Other article on the same topic: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/1/5959637/nasa-cannae-drive-tests-have-promising-results

To be exact, the chinese reported 720mN and the americans found ~50microN. The first one I simply do not believe and the second one seems more credible, yet it has to be said that measuring such low thrust levels on a thrust-stand is very difficult and prone to measurement errors. @Krzys, the thrust level of 720mN is within the same range of other electric propulsion systems which are considered - and even used in some cases - for station keeping, also for the ISS actually (for which there are also ideas to use a high power system delivering several Newtons of thrust). Then on the idea, I do not rule out that an interaction between the EM waves and 'vacuum' could be possible, however if this would be true then this surely would be detectable in any particle accelerator as it would produce background events/noise. The energy densities involved and the conversion to thrust via some form of interaction with the vacuum surely could not provide thrusts in the range reported by the chinese, nor the americans. The laws of momentum conservation would still need to apply. Finally, 'quantum vacuum virtual plasma'.. really?

We were also discussing a while ago a propulsion system using the relativistic fragments from nuclear fission. That would also produce an extremely high ISP (>100000) with a fairly high thrust. Never really got any traction though.

I absolutely do not see the point in a photon rocket. Certainly, the high energy releasing nulcear processes (annihilation, fusion, ...) should rather be used to heat up some fluid to plasma state and accelerate it via magnetic nozzle. This would surely work as door-opener to our solar system...and by the way minimize the heat disposal problem if regenerative cooling is used.