Interesting thread.
I want to side with Boethius (for nickname alone
) here, and maybe bring up some other aspects of this issue.
First thought is it makes me think the old ether debate is relevant. The ether being discarded (by Einstein's crowd, Michelson-Morley, etc.), perhaps when it should not have been, adds to the difficulty.
For Newton, as I recall, a vacuum is a space totally devoid of matter. It is arguable that no such state can exist anywhere, certainly not on Earth, and such a vacuum has never to my knowledge been constructed.
The ether was itself a "type" of matter that contained all other matter, of the sort of background fabric which would make vacuum thrust a very real possibility.
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/philosop/ether.htm
Space could be no vacuum at all, but perhaps containing of a different type of matter.
Here from Department of physics, U. of Illinois (
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1046):
"We don’t know of any examples of a perfect vacuum, but know some bits of space that get pretty close. Space beyond the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t a bad approximation to a vacuum, but it is filled with solar wind particles, light from the sun, cosmic rays and cosmic microwave background radiation. It’s probably also filled with dark matter which doesn’t interact with other stuff (except gravitationally, and possibly only through the feeble weak interaction), as well as neutrinos. If you manage to pump all the air out of a steel can, for example, you will have a vacuum in there, but there will be photons constantly radiated off of the walls and re-absorbed by them. This soup of photons will be in thermal equilibrium with the walls, and therefore will have a defined "temperature". In fact, even the deepest of deep space (outside the galaxy, for example), is in a radiation bath of temperature 3K, left over from the Big Bang. There may be other stuff, like the neutrinos, for example, which are not in thermal equilibrium with the 3K radiation because they don’t interact with it, and so space may have two or more 'temperatures'."
So, I guess where I stand now is, if they did go to outer space, it's probably not a vacuum, and the whole idea of a true vacuum could be just another fairy tale. NASA justifies their propulsion strongest when they say that the thrust actually is designed to push against the rocket rather than the exhaust. Not sure I buy it, or how the thing works (I did see some diagrams...), but this, at least theoretically, eliminates any "need" to have air or anything else to thrust against. Because as it stands it seems to me as soon as that rocket hit space the exhaust would die out,, and I have my doubts about the sustainability of any fire-based, or even electrical ignition functioning under vacuum-like conditions.
http://www.chem.elte.hu/foundations/alt ... CERN01.pdf
For the record I do not believe in anti-matter, dark matter, or even black holes, and I think that if a rocket really broke completely away from Earth atmosphere (I think there could be a layer of "sub-space" between the two, perhaps where satellites or space stations go?) it would probably crumble onto itself like a tin can under the transitional pressure. The difference between maintaining the pressure in a pressurized airliner, and at the extents of the atmosphere, is tremendous.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-a ... d_462.html
From Google (search-"how high is atmosphere"):
"The Earth's atmosphere is about 300 miles (480 km) thick, but most of the atmosphere (about 80%) is within 10 miles (16 km) of the surface of the Earth. There is no exact place where the atmosphere ends; it just gets thinner and thinner, until it merges with outer space." (!)
According to that chart cited above, sea level pressure is @1.03 kg/sq.cm or 14.7 psi. 50,000 feet measures 0.113 kg/sq.cm or 1.16 psi. 300 miles is 1,584,000 feet, this means the pressure at that altitude should be something like 30 times less what it is at 50,000 feet. Still in atmosphere, and frankly, I find the 300 mile line a little too tidy.
I apologize in advance if I rehashed something I must have missed, and yes I have been considered sane usually. Also happy to make your acquaintance.
PS:
On a side note, If we've been to space, then manifestly the propulsion works.
But if we have not been to space, how would we know what happens in space (re: Heiwa HELLO!), or even what it is like in any way?