Spacecraft, CT and MRI machines!!! If they can pull this off, I see a different breed of CAR! Think about it: if this new drive would be that power-efficient, maybe a car could go thousands of miles on a single charge. And with renewable energy technologies improving all the time too, I can even imagine a car that never needs to be charged anymore.

This looks more like a limited slip clutch then a gear reduction. In order to change speeds or load with mechanical means you have to change leverage. Currently the only 2 alternatives to transmit power are compressed air, hydraulics and electric. The best solution would a Hydrogen fuel cell Motor. Hydrogen is the power and the electric is the transmission.

Transmission only 50% eff tells me this article is a joke. Magnetic transmission have been used for a century and every day in trains, ships and many other places. But such units pose problems on spacecraft as the magnetism can riun sensor readings, etc.

Magnetic drives or clutches are nothing new. They were used in cranes as a way to make a smooth clutch with infinite, even control for swing or rotation. The clutches weren\'t that great compared to friction clutches which had much more power although not as smooth as magnetic. The magnetic clutches were also power hogs compared to friction clutches. Maybe research and development can bring forward some new ideas in this field. Think what Leonardo could have done with magnetic drives. Ha

Don, I agree. We already have this in place. Get rid of the transmission like we have done in some electric vehicles. But I think they also want to get rid of the friction between the motor gear meshing the drive component gear. Removing the transmission takes care of most of the friction but not all of it.
Satellites have very different needs than cars and operate under very different conditions as well. If they find the solution for one, it still may not work for the other.

It might be possible to make an automotive gas turbine with magnetic bearings, but pistons require rubbing against cylinder walls to maintain pressure resulting from compression and combustion.
Hydrogen isn\'t \"fuel,\" there are no vast underground pools of the stuff, it has to be manufactured by electrolyzing water or hydrocarbons, both requiring considerably more energy than can be obtained from the resulting refined hydrogen. At best it\'s \"energy storage,\" and not very efficient at that. Hydrogen isn\'t EVER going to be cheap, even if made using sea water and powered by vast arrays of solar panels or wind generators. That may become necessary eventually, but it\'s still erroneous to speak of hydrogen as \"fuel.\"
Methane would be a better fuel choice, as it can be extracted as a waste product of biological processes, or butanol made from agricultural crop residue (that would be bio-butanol), or better still propanol or bio-propanol (same energy content as gasoline but not yet as easily manufactured as butanol).

If you would like to see some of the advantages of magnetics in space, take a look at:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4o7lehAtog

This mechanism switches the optical filter in a beam path in 30 milliseconds, using almost no power and producing almost no vibration. Mechanisms of this nature can be used for many other applications, as well. The goals of the researchers in Spain are quite valid.

As an engineer at NASA in the 1970\'s I designed magnetic bearings. NASA Tech Memo 78048. Since retireing in 1989 I developed an improved MAGLEV system US7,617,779. More recently, I have a patent pending US 11/510,818 on a non-contacting high reduction rotary to linear converter which may have direct application to your task. If you feel I could cotribute to your effort, I would like to participate in it. Phil
pastuder@netzero.com 3126Gracefield Rd 209,SilverSpring Md 20904 USA

Guess I missed something here. They have been using, still are using \"mag\" transmissions for the last 60 years in American industry. It\'s called an eddy current clutch, so what is so spectacular about this?

I can\'t find any such \'Magdrive\' program. There\'s a better-detailed version of this story at: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/ciuo-usa092010.php Going by that, I would think that this site would have the info: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html Searching their Space theme yields 54 total projects, none of which have anything to do with a frictionless or magnetic drive-train. It\'s possible that this program is still waiting approval. And it\'s possible that this technology will depend on cryogenic temperatures to function, so any thought of this being used for the terrestrial automobile is going well beyond the scope of the article.