Nasa is a major player in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion. British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. He has built a number of demonstration systems, but critics reject his relativity-based theory and insist that, according to the law of conservation of momentum, it cannot work. According to good scientific practice, an independent third party needed to replicate Shawyer's results. As Wired.co.uk reported, this happened last year when a Chinese team built its own EmDrive and confirmed that it produced 720 mN (about 72 grams) of thrust, enough for a practical satellite thruster. Such a thruster could be powered by solar electricity, eliminating the need for the supply of propellant that occupies up to half the launch mass of many satellites. The Chinese work attracted little attention; it seems that nobody in the West believed in it. However, a US scientist, Guido Fetta, has built his own propellant-less microwave thruster, and managed to persuade Nasa to test it out. The test results were presented on July 30 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Astonishingly enough, they are positive. The Nasa team based at the Johnson Space Centre gave its paper the title "Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF [radio frequency] Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum". The five researchers spent six days setting up test equipment followed by two days of experiments with various configurations. These tests included using a "null drive" similar to the live version but modified so it would not work, and using a device which would produce the same load on the apparatus to establish whether the effect might be produced by some effect unrelated to the actual drive. They also turned the drive around the other way to check whether that had any effect. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive
Sly, do you really think someone like me would own a Government Motors vehicle? Please. You know I rock a Kia. Update: I just tried it. It didn't move my car, but it did make delicious popcorn.
Who doesn't love some fresh microwave popcorn. Also it probably does a great job of hiding the smell of pot smoke in the car.
Interesting. But 720 millinewtons would be like hitching a mouse in soft sand up to a satellite with a spider thread. Not a hell of a lot of go. But I wonder how much power it takes to produce said thrust? Then I wonder or suspect that the weight of the solar cells required to produce the necessary power don't out weigh the fuel required to produce the same thrust, making the launch physics even worse. Nice when you get it up there though.
The amount of force they are talking about is incredibly small. It is probably only is feasible in space because of the near lack of resistance. edit: To more directly answer your question, yes, it should still produce a force regardless of location. The virtual plasma should exist in all of space (read existence), not just "outer-space."
I'm assuming that this would be for once the satellite is in space, rather than getting it out there. In space, even minimal amounts of thrust, over time, will get it up to massive speed.
Exactly! You could in theory use this for long distance travel, where you have time to keep building up speed. It would be impossible to stop though without carrying another propulsion source.
"Equally significantly, reversing the orientation of the drive reversed the thrust." [video=youtube;QDaCMhKPGys]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDaCMhKPGys[/video]
Fermilab will do an experiment to find whether the 3rd dimension is an illusion. I say it is. Bets? http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=43806 And don't push none of those fake 3-D greenbacks on me.
damn you, I was going to do a Doctor Who video (to show how nerdy I am), but have it be about the "Impossible Girl" (Clara Oswald). See BGD? That shows that I read the thread before I posted my initial reaction to a post.
