That balloon experiment is simply expelling air against the atmosphere behind it, forcing the balloon forward, same with the balloon being on the car.
So that means a more robust substance behind the balloon should allow the balloon to move faster then, right? Let's put it in water then. Or even better, let's encase it in concrete and see how far it goes.
You see that balloon with the tube inside it on the car, well try that experiment yourself but this time put a large flat balloon on the other end of the tube and see if the car moves.
You will find that it doesn't.
Why does't it move?
Because the air being expelled from the balloon on top of the car is swallowed up by the larger balloon that has no air inside it.
EXACTLY. That's what I've been trying to tell you. You're not causing anything thrust. You're moving a gas from one part of the "craft" (the two balloons teathered together with the tube) into another.
Try the same experiment with 2 balloons of equal size and fill both with air, yet fill one of them with a little less air and what you will see is....the one with more air inside, will expel some of it into the other balloon until equal air pressure is attained, in both balloons.
Yes, you're right. Congratulations. See above. A vacuum is an open space with no air or any mass in it. A deflated balloon is not an open space.
What you will then notice is that the elasticity of both balloons is forcing the air they both have against each other but they are equal, so, if the tube is not in so tight into the necks of those balloons, they will repel each other...and equal and opposite reaction.
That is not equal and opposite reaction. Please actually
read Newton's third law of motion. Guess what? It came to be understood by one man, Isaac Newton, before "official sources" were "spoon feeding" it to anyone. In fact, no one was spoon feeding anything like it to anyone. It was going against the grain.
The reason why some people don't get the equal and opposite reaction in a vacuum, is because they hang onto things being repelled against each other as in the person on a wheeled chair against the mass of a medicine ball, yet the equal and opposite reaction works in space, only in a negative form.
You just simply don't understand. The reason the wheelchair can move is because mass/energy was forced in the opposite direction of it's desired motion. It has nothing to do with pushing against the air. If that was so, you could use the medicine ball as a sail on a boat and it would be quite effective. Hell, you could use air as a sail on a boat and it would be quite effective.
For instance:
In space, the rocket applies the force , expelling it's fuel (if it were possible, which it wouldn't be) into space, which is one action, and the vacuum of space swallows it up as fast as it comes out, creating an equal and opposite reaction, which means that the rocket could sit there all day long and expel fuel but space would swallow it up exactly as fast as it was coming out.
No, the action is the expelling of the mass/energy, and the reaction is the rocket moving in the opposite direction of the force.
Try and picture it like this.
Go on a treadmill and imagine yourself as the rocket, meaning your legs are the propulsion.
Space is the floor of that treadmill.
Ok, start running and what happens?
What you will observe is, no matter how fast you run, your legs will be equally pushing that floor away from you, basically, you are using all your energy up until you collapse...but you have gone "nowhere" just like a rocket in space would go "nowhere"
How does that even equate? A vacuum isn't a solid object moving under your feet in the opposite way that you are trying to go.
The only way you would propel forward, was if the floor roller seized up, which would propel you forward. Now if N.A.S.A can somehow get the vacuum of space to seize, up, then off you go, whizzing along.
Let's not hold our breath for that though....or should we?
A vacuum isn't moving, so it can't seize up. There's nothing in a vacuum to move. So it can't seize up, nor can it "move under your feet."
What you don't seem to understand is rocket propulsion isn't like swimming. When you're swimming, you're fuel is the water around you, your thrust is pushing the water back. It's difficult and extremely inefficient. When a rocket goes, it's fuel is in the tank. It burns this fuel to create a more energetic thrust. By burning it, the mass/energy moves faster out of the nozzles than it would have just being pumped out. So the rocket goes in the opposite direction of the force.