1G Space Propulsion Would Revolutionize Transportation and Energy

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Today, there is a new video interview of the lead researcher at Exodus Technologies who are making a radical new propellantless propulsion system.

They claim they can produce over 1G of thrust for a lightweight device. IF this claim is true then they could make spaceships that could go to Mars in 5 days and reach near light lightspeed in a year. They would need to constantly produce thrust in space with an array of lightweight devices. If these things are proven and developed then our world radically changes from an ordinary world into a Star Trek with impulse drive and the equivalent of antigravity. The propellentless propulsion would offset gravity.

In the new video, Charles Buhler also describes that this would open up possibly limitless energy. The energy aspect is one of the reasons that physicists do not believe this is possible. It would violate fundamental laws of physics. There is the belief that it would be a perpetual motion machine. It might make a perpetual motion machine but if we figure out what is happening then it could like wind and wind turbines. We could tap into another source of energy with different rules and limits.

Exodus Technologies wants to perform tests in orbit. Moving a satellite with the drive would eliminate claims of bad experiments and measurement error and fraud.

The key next step will be an orbital cubesat and other space missions with the devices. IF they can do what we thought was impossible then that is when the gates open to a breakthrough future.

Buhler discusses not just the simple way to generate limitless energy by spinning a turbine endlessly. He discusses exploring the structure of vacuum and vacuum energy. This is because if physics is not what we thought then we need to understand what is happening and how we can use it.

Charles Buhler is an expert in electrostatics applications in space as he is the lead expert in NASA for electrostatics. Dr. Buhler has experience working with electrostatic discharge & ESD safety for the Space Shuttle Program, the International Space Station Program and the Hubble Space Telescope Program. He was also a Co-Investigator for three NASA Research Announcements funded by the Mars Exploration Program, and is currently working on NASA’s Dust Project focused on utilizing electrostatic methods to remove dust from personnel and equipment that will be sent to the Moon through NASA’s Constellation Program.

The new video discusses how they are building upon the electrostatics industry. NASA physicist Dr. Charles Buhler discusses a breakthrough propellantless space drive by Exodus Propulsion Technologies that exceeds 1g (9.8 m/s²) thrust in vacuum tests.

Dr. Charles Buhler is the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technology and lead scientist and co-founder of NASA’s Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center. Dr. Buhler has a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from Florida State University, which he received in 2000 while working on high temperature superconductors at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

One newton (N) of force is required to lift a mass of 100 grams vertically upwards. Another viable combination would be 10 millinewtons for a 1 gram test article. They have said that the strongest force they generated is 10 millinewtons. IF they can setup the experiment correctly they could levitate a 1 gram test article. He described it again to Tim Ventura. He describes the current device as kind of like a crappy battery.

29 thoughts on “1G Space Propulsion Would Revolutionize Transportation and Energy”

  1. The ability to move through space fast enough (and with a velocity curve that works, speed up fast enough to generate gravity going in one direction, and generate enough gravity as you slow down, and still make !G on board) It seems so much simpler to improve propulsion, then “rotating sections” of our spacecraft? Why bother with that engineering nightmare, when all we have to do is go there quicker? Not having gravity in spaceflight, creates many, major medical problems. Radiation damage, and every other threat will be exposed to in going between planets and stars will be greatly reduced when it takes us less time, to do just that.

    Works for me…

    • Well, yes, it would be science fiction come true.

      Unlimited energy. Flying cars, trivial access to space. Interplanetary trips in a few days, with gravity across all the trip except when the ship turns 180 degrees to start braking, something that might take just a few minutes.

      And why stop there? relativistic or near relativistic interstellar probes that get to destination in a few years would be possible, while traveling at significant fractions of c. Whatever the probe can take while sweeping the light years of interstellar dust from here to its destination. All fed with rotating generators pushed by these devices. Free energy and free travel, forever.

      Human crewed trips would be feasible too, of course. Maybe not that fast as the probes, given we need to still accelerate a lot of mass, keep it and its payload more or less intact and then brake. But the trips would be measured in years or decades, not centuries or millennia. Feasible.

      But also, ugly things. Trivially done planet killer weapons, accelerated at relativistic speeds with ease. And the prospect of exponentially growing the energy density of the local area of space, until it’s so dense it starts its gravitational collapse into a black hole.

      Unless humans eventually become wiser and refrain from using such a technology too much, the hand of fate would be quick and violent. But how do you stop a diaspora of people traveling in starships from doing whatever they feel like?

      But these concerns are, as said, science fiction. Prove it first, then we can worry.

  2. What’s described here isn’t a perpetual motion machine or a limitless energy machine, but rather a battery. Solar cells are, in fact, batteries too. Photons push electrons in the panels around to do work, but eventually they are lost and the machinery succumbs to entropy and must be rebuilt or replaced.

    We have a “free lunch” at the event horizon of black holes; though it’s not really “free,” as Hawking established. According to the Casimir effect, particle/anti-particle pairs are created at the event horizon. Half that pair fall into the black hole and the other half don’t – looking like a net creation. Eventually, after billions of years, the black hole dissolves or evaporates and the other half of the particles captured radiate their information back out. To us, though, it looks like a free lunch.

    If quantum/relativistic effect drives motion and that turns a turbine, it’s more or less similar to solar batteries. The construction can do work but eventually it breaks down too from entropy. It may provide lots more energy than gasoline with less pollution, but it gets used up too.

    • I don’t agree. A perpetual motion machine implies you get energy from nothing. Or, you start off with a certain amount of energy, and it never goes goes away. That’s not what we are talking about in very fast space travel. You mention the Casimir effect. The fact is, we have no clue what that is. Not even close. We have no idea WHAT the Casimir effect is, You mention particle and ant-particle pairs. Black holes, and quantum “stuff”, And a whole bunch of other poop that does not connect the dots? So please do. Connect the dots.

      Even if you do not agree with what I do, or believe (which you or anyone can see by my previous posts.) Who I am should be obvious. if you come up with ideas and solutions I never thought of, I WILL LISTEN. Except, under one important consideration: If what you came up with what hurts other people, perhaps most important, people I will never know, I choose not to go there. Come on dude. Think about the wild joy you’ll get when you get answers to questions you never knew to ask.

      You don’t have to know the right questions. But think of the joy you might get, if you hear the right answers? Be open minded, and who knows? You might figure out the right questions to ask. And you’ll get the answers to questions you want, as well as need.

    • “…What’s described here isn’t a perpetual motion machine…”

      You didn’t watch the video, or closely enough. He was asked this specifically and said that you turn the power off and the force remains. He specifically said this was a “problem” but, that was what happens, and he could not explain why yet.

      9:48-10:49

  3. On the subject of “perpetual motion” … It would be helpful to know how much electrical power goes into the device and how much force it produces as a result.

    I expect it to use more power than can be regained by the resulting force, and that there is an upper limit to its efficiency (<100%). This would still be in line with thermodynamics and should silence some of the disbelievers.

  4. At first glance, this looks too pretty to be true, but if proved right, it will open a new era in our civilization. In relation to be a perpetual machine, I think it probably drain energy from the capacitors or the elements used to reach the design voltage. This energy should be replenish from a battery, solar pannels or a generator. It may be a direct conversor from stored energy to kinetic energy.
    In any case a very interesting proposal.

    • Any reactionless drive is overunity at any efficiency above that of a perfect photon rocket: 300 megawatts per Newton of force.

      Because above this ratio, there is a speed, no matter how high or close to light speed c, where the drive has more kinetic energy than you have put into it. Hence free energy.

      And these devices are ridiculously above that ratio of watts per Newton. They probably are overunity at walking speed.

      Yeah, we can handwave it by telling they get energy from somewhere. Be it the quantum vacuum, magic radiation from the bottom of the cosmos and whatnot.

      But the fact remains you would be appearing usable energy here that wasn’t before.

    • Any reactionless drive can make a perpetual motion machine. You have a constant energy input for a constant thrust, so you just keep accelerating (in vacuum). But the kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared, so the amount of energy you’re adding per second keeps increasing. Do it long enough and it’ll be more than the input energy per second. And you can’t get out of it by saying the drive is less efficient at higher velocity, because according to relativity, an object doesn’t have any particular absolute velocity. It just has velocities relative to other objects.

      That said, a reactionless drive violates conservation of momentum pretty much by definition, and that’s just as far outside the bounds of known physics. If you actually can somehow violate one of those conservation laws, there’s no solid reason to believe you can’t do both, since either one would mean we’re missing something fundamental in our understanding of physics.

  5. Best of luck to them.

    This kind of high risk/high stakes experiments always need a fair bit of kick start money. To get to space, prove themselves and get their time on the limelight.

    A past recent experience was IVO Ltd and their asymmetric capacitors drive, which wasn’t successful due to reasons outside their control. They leased a spot in another satellite that failed.

    Hopefully they get a dedicated cubesat, at least.

  6. It sounds great! I hope it’s true. (He did an awful lot of hedging in the video, though).

    Ever since Rossi with room temperature Cold Fusion and Dick Weir with Pervoskite Supercapacitors (Eestor, barium titanate powder) I harbor a solid skepticism of such announcements.

    Could this be true? Could be. Is it true? Well, let’s see who lays down money to do experiments in the cold, harsh vacuum of space. If Drew or Charles put their own money up, then my interest will grow…

    • It might not take a lot of money to get this into space. All they have to do is design ia simple light weight device that ca easily be attached to a satellite and controlled by the satellite computer. All Starlink and geosynchronous orbit satellites need small thrusters to adjust their orbit. So the life of the satellite is determined by how much fuel it caries. Once the fuel runs out the satellite cannot maintain its orbit and must be replaced.

      Typically the satellite is slightly smaller than the rocket can carry If the electrostatic thruster nd small and light enough a satellite company might be willing to install it on a new satellite and launch it. and then test it once in orbit. If it doesn’t work the satellite will simply use the fuel and regular thrusters to maintain its orbit. But if it does it could significantly extend the life of the satellite and And delay the need to launch a replacement satellite. So the satellite owner might be willing to run the experiment for you at no charge. Then future satellite could be launched without fuel. This would allow a smaller cheeper rocket to be used or heavier more capable satellite to be deployed in the future.

  7. Yesterday I rewatched the movie The Angry Red Planet. In it the rocket from Earth had a steady 1G acceleration to Mars. It took 47 days to get there. I guess 1G wasn’t as fast back in the 50’s as it is now.

    • maybe they didn´t know how to calculate constant acceleration. Maybe they run into a plot problem… they needed the trip to take that long but at the same time they wanted to justify Earthlike gravity in the ship?

      also notice the time ti LAND anywhere is twice the one shown, as the ship needs to decelerate. I don´t remember if Brian is considering deceleration or just fly by.

  9. Forget testing in space until it’s been tested properly in a vacuum chamber, Faraday cage around the ‘drive’, no magnetic materials nearby, Earth’s field canceled out. All of which is vastly cheaper than launching this into space.

    Hey, forget that. Just wrap the test article in aluminum foil to guarantee there isn’t any external field messing up the results, and test it oriented parallel to and perpendicular to the local field if nulling out the local magnetic field is too challenging.

    Do the sort of tests on the ground that you do if you’re not afraid of proving something doesn’t work.

    • All of these test you mention ( and 800+ more you have not thought of ) have been run in 10E-6 torr vacuum. There are thousands of photos, videos, notes and test articles in our archives. As a team, we have 200+ years of space sciences and engineering experience between us.

      • Thanks for answering on Nextbigfuture Drew.

        Did you want to do an interview on my Youtube channel. I can gather questions and we can discuss.

      • Hi Drew
        Thanks for responding to a sceptical Public. The effect you’re seeing does seem very marginal. What makes you think it’s not just over-interpretation by hopeful experimentalists? There’s a lot of theoretical shibboleths for a wider audience to be convinced.

      • Then I’d suggest the first thing you do is provide an obvious link at your site to those archives, because the only thing I found was a gallery with 4 old videos.

    • Well–you got the aluminum foil part right.

      You know, I have a turbo-encabulator that’ll do 2G

      –send money

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