{"id":93323,"date":"2019-07-08T15:22:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T22:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-caterpillar-drive-that-actually-looks-like-a-caterpillar"},"modified":"2019-07-08T15:22:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T22:22:46","slug":"a-caterpillar-drive-that-actually-looks-like-a-caterpillar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-caterpillar-drive-that-actually-looks-like-a-caterpillar","title":{"rendered":"A Caterpillar Drive That Actually Looks Like A Caterpillar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-caterpillar-drive-that-actually-looks-like-a-caterpillar.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>[Tom Clancy]\u2019s <em>The Hunt For Red October<\/em> is a riveting tale of a high-level Soviet defector, a cunning young intelligence analyst, a chase across the North Atlantic, and a new submarine powered by a secret stealth \u2018caterpillar\u2019 drive. Of course there weren\u2019t a whole lot of technical details in the book, but the basic idea of this propulsion system was a magnetohydrodynamic drive. Put salt water in a tube, wrap a coil of wire around the tube, run some current through the wire, and the water spits out the back. Yes, this is a real propulsion system, and there was a prototype ferry in Japan that used the technology, but really the whole idea of a caterpillar drive is just a weird footnote in the history of propulsion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/108449-rc-solar-boat-with-emp-drive\" target=\"_blank\">This project for the Hackaday Prize<\/a> is probably the closest we\u2019re going to see to a caterpillar drive, and it can do it on a small remote-controlled boat. Instead of forcing water out of the back of a tube with the help of magic pixies, it\u2019s doing it with a piston. It\u2019s a drive for a solar boat race, and if you look at the cutaway view, it does, indeed, look like a caterpillar.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of pushing water through a tube by pushing water through a magnetic field, this drive system is something like a linear motor, moving a piston back and forth. The piston contains a valve, and when the piston moves one way, it sucks water in. When the piston moves in the opposite direction, it pushes water out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Tom Clancy]\u2019s The Hunt For Red October is a riveting tale of a high-level Soviet defector, a cunning young intelligence analyst, a chase across the North Atlantic, and a new submarine powered by a secret stealth \u2018caterpillar\u2019 drive. Of course there weren\u2019t a whole lot of technical details in the book, but the basic idea [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}