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EmDrive: NASA Eagleworks' Peer-Reviwed Paper Is On Its Way (ibtimes.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from International Business Times UK: An independent scientist has confirmed that the paper by scientists at the NASA Eagleworks Laboratories on achieving thrust using highly controversial space propulsion technology EmDrive has passed peer review, and will soon be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Dr Jose Rodal posted on the NASA Spaceflight forum -- in a now-deleted comment -- that the new paper will be entitled "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum" and is authored by "Harold White, Paul March, Lawrence, Vera, Sylvester, Brady and Bailey." Rodal also revealed that the paper will be published in the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power, a prominent journal published by the AIAA, which is one of the world's largest technical societies dedicated to aerospace innovations. Although Eagleworks engineer Paul March has posted several updates on the ongoing research to the NASA Spaceflight forum showing that repeated tests conducted on the EmDrive in a vacuum successfully yielded thrust results that could not be explained by external interference, those in the international scientific community who doubt the feasibility of the technology have long believed real results of thrust by Eagleworks would never see the light of day.
The efficiency is very low. Read TFA: "[...] the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 +/- 0.1 mN/Kw ()".
According to TFA, however, they are working on a far more efficient design.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Well, if it violates the theory of relativity, anything could happen, I guess.
The guy ("scientist"?), Roger Shawyer, who invented it claims that it's actually due to the theory of relativity that it works. Here's a quote from the article:
based on the theory of special relativity, electricity converted into microwaves and fired within a closed cone-shaped cavity causes the microwave particles to exert more force on the flat surface at the large end of the cone (i.e. there is less combined particle momentum at the narrow end due to a reduction in group particle velocity), thereby generating thrust.
I'm not a physicist, so I can't speak to whether his explanation makes sense.
I imagine that there will be replicability tests. It's possible, but not certain, that we may have found Clarke's "space drive", a drive requiring no reaction mass. On the other hand, so many of these things have fizzled, I'm remaining VERY cautiously optimistic.
They found a way to hit the rounding error in the universe simulation and accumulate it over time
First of all, we already know that most of Newtonian physics is wrong and we've known this for over 100 years. Take gravity for example - Newton's limited understanding of physics has no explanation for it, but general relatively tells us that mass distorts spacetime which results in an attraction between two bodies. Anyway, a more relevant example is the fact that the universe is not only expanding, but it's expanding faster than the speed of light and it's accelerating. A limited understand of special relatively may make it seem that it's impossible to move faster than the speed of light, but again general relatively explains that it is possible by stretching spacetime (que mention of warp drive, although that's not at all what I'm suggesting this is). And while I'm fairly sure our galaxy isn't spewing some reaction mass, it's still accelerating away from the center of the universe. How's that possible? Netwon again says it isn't, and even modern theoretical physics blames 'dark energy', which is to say 'no fucking idea'. We have good models for the 4 forces known to physics, but they don't play well together and we are obviously missing something. The point is, don't be so fast to discount something like this, while you obviously should be doubtful, you must understand there's a lot more to our universe than you learned in high school and probably university physics.
I'm interested in space exploration as well. There is a difference between an enthusiast and a space nutter. And no: Science Fiction is fiction. "Dream big" only works if you also "work hard" and are realistic about what is possible given the KNOWN LAWS of Physics. Just because you read Ringworld doesn't mean one can be built.
Space nutters are usually tech people who are uneducated in the hard sciences
Yet you don't seem to be able to discern who they are. You accused me of being a "space nutter" and I do have a background in hard science and engineering and accounting as well. I've built parts that have actually gone into space. I'm actually largely a voice of caution for those who spout overly optimistic timelines or economic absurdities regarding space travel.
You seem obsessed with that term "space nutter" like others are with hipster and you throw it at anyone who shows the least optimism about space travel. Lighten up. Someone who thinks that someday we might actually develop the technology to go to other planets or leave our solar system is just being optimistic. Nothing wrong with that even if they don't understand the technical details. It amounts to nothing more than fanciful musing. As long as they aren't hurting anyway with their day dreaming what do you care?
Yeah, space travel is an incredibly difficult problem and it will take a long time before we can do really useful things. This is not news.
Yes, but given the number of folks who set out to disprove and ended up with thrust they can't explain, we're far from ready to say "no".
If you live in a Newtonian world, you're not going to accept that this could ever work. If you admit to the possibility that momentum could be quantized, you can't rule it out yet.
Bruce Perens.