Warp drive feasible? Apparently so.

[Ryan Ruck]

Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive

April 29, 2015

A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

EM Drive:

Last summer, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive – a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.

The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant.

This lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum if it were able to accelerate.

However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive.

In 2014, Prof. Yang’s papers reported extensive tests involving internal temperature measurements with embedded thermocouples.

It was reported (in SPR Ltd.’s website) that if the Chinese EM Drive were to be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) and work as reported, it could provide the necessary delta-V (change in velocity needed to perform an on-orbit maneuver) to compensate for the Station’s orbital decay and thus eliminate the requirement of re-boosts from visiting vehicles. Despite these reports, Prof. Yang offered no scientifically-accepted explanation as to how the EM Drive can produce propulsion in space.

Dr. White proposed that the EM Drive’s thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) behaving like propellant ions behave in a MagnetoHydroDynamics drive (a method electrifying propellant and then directing it with magnetic fields to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction) for spacecraft propulsion.

In Dr. White’s model, the propellant ions of the MagnetoHydroDynamics drive are replaced as the fuel source by the virtual particles of the Quantum Vacuum, eliminating the need to carry propellant.

This model was also met with criticism in the scientific community because the Quantum Vacuum cannot be ionized and is understood to be “frame-less” – meaning you cannot “push” against it, as required for momentum.

The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.

The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).

However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.

To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.

A community of enthusiasts, engineers, and scientists on several continents joined forces on the NASASpaceflight.com EM Drive forum to thoroughly examine the experiments and discuss theories of operation of the EM Drive.

The quality of forum discussions attracted the attention of EagleWorks team member Paul March at NASA, who has shared testing and background information with the group in order to fill in information gaps and further the dialogue.

This synergy between NASASpaceflight.com contributors and NASA has resulted in several contributions to the body of knowledge about the EM Drive.

The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.

After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry.

Applications:

The applications of such a propulsion drive are multi-fold, ranging from low Earth orbit (LEO) operations, to transit missions to the Moon, Mars, and the outer solar system, to multi-generation spaceships for interstellar travel.

Under these application considerations, the closest-to-home potential use of EM Drive technology would be for LEO space stations – such as the International Space Station.

In terms of the Station, propellant-less propulsion could amount to significant savings by drastically reducing fuel resupply missions to the Station and eliminate the need for visiting-vehicle re-boost maneuvers.

The elimination of these currently necessary re-boost maneuvers would potentially reduce stress on the Station’s structure and allow for a pro-longed operational period for the ISS and future LEO space stations.

Likewise, EM drive technology could also be applied to geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites around Earth.

For a typical geostationary communications satellite with a 6kW (kilowatt) solar power capacity, replacing the conventional apogee engine, attitude thrusters, and propellant volume with an EM Drive would result in a reduction of the launch mass from 3 tons to 1.3 tons.

The satellite would be launched into LEO, where its solar arrays and antennas would be deployed. The EM-drive would then propel the satellite in a spiral trajectory up to GEO in 36 days.

Moving out from LEO, Mr. March, from NASA EagleWorks, noted that a spacecraft equipped with EM drive technology could surpass the performance expectations of the WarpStar-I concept vehicle.

If such a similar vehicle were equipped with an EM Drive, it could enable travel from the surface of Earth to the surface of the moon within four hours.

Such a vehicle would be capable of carrying two to six passengers and luggage and would be able to return to Earth in the same four-hour interval using one load of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cell-derived electrical power, assuming a 500 to 1,000 Newton/kW efficiency EM Drive system.

While the current maximum reported efficiency is close to only 1 Newton/kW (Prof. Yang’s experiments in China), Mr. March noted that such an increase in efficiency is most likely achievable within the next 50 years provided that current EM Drive propulsion conjectures are close to accurate.

Far more ambitious applications for the EM Drive were presented by Dr. White and include crewed missions to Mars as well as to the outer planets.

Specifically, these two proposed missions (to Mars and the outer planets) would use a 2 MegaWatt Nuclear Electric Propulsion spacecraft equipped with an EM Drive with a thrust/powerInput of 0.4 Newton/kW.

With this design, a mission to Mars would result in a 70-day transit from Earth to the red planet, a 90-day stay at Mars, and then another 70-day return transit to Earth.

According to Dr. White, “A 90 metric ton, 2 MegaWatt nuclear electric propulsion mission to Mars [would have] considerable reduction in transit times due to having a thrust-to-mass ratio greater than the gravitational acceleration of the Sun (0.6 milli-g’s at 1 Astronomical Unit).”

Furthermore, this type of mission would have the added benefit of requiring only a “single heavy lift launch vehicle” as compared to “a current conjunction-class Mars mission using chemical propulsion systems, which would require multiple heavy lift launch vehicles.”

Presenting at the “Human Outer Solar System Exploration via Q-Thruster Technology” panel at IEEE, 2014, Mr. Joosten and Dr. White explained that “only 12 days would be utilized spiraling up from a 400 km low Earth orbit to achieve escape velocity and only 5 days spiraling down to a 400 km low Mars orbit.”

While these spiral trajectories around Earth would have to be carefully designed to avoid or minimize time in the most problematic regions of the Van Allen radiation belts that could expose crewmembers to undesirable levels of radiation, Mr. Joosten and Dr. White note that “These relatively rapid transits would argue for mission strategies where the ‘Q-Ship’ (EM Drive ship) operates between the lowest orbits possible to minimize the launch requirements of crew and supplies from Earth and lander complexity at Mars.”

Moreover, this type of EM Drive-enabled mission could negate the need to bring along, for the duration of the mission, a high-speed reentry vehicle to return a Mars crew back to the Earth’s surface because “By quickly spiraling into Earth orbit at the end of the mission, the crew could readily be retrieved via a ‘ground-up’ launch.

“While the fast Mars transits that Q-Thruster technology [EM drive] could enable would be revolutionary, the independence from the limitations of departure and arrival windows may ultimately be more so,” added Mr. Joosten and Dr. White.

This means that an EM drive ship mission could be designed without consideration of the every-two-year interplanetary conjunction launch windows that currently govern Earth-Mars transit missions and could help stabilize and provide more routine Mars crew rotation timetables.

This same elimination of inter-planetary conjunction-enabled launch windows would be applied to crewed missions to the outer planets as well.

For such a mission, such as a crewed flight to the outer planets – specifically, a Titan/Enceladus mission at Saturn – an EM Drive would allow for a 9-month transit period from Earth to Saturn, a 6-month in-situ mission at Titan, another 6-month in-situ mission at Enceladus, and a 9-month return trip to Earth. This would result in a total mission duration of just 32 months.

However, EM drive applications are not limited to Mars or outer solar system targets.

Applications of this technology in deep space missions have already received conceptual outlines.

In particular, the Alpha Centauri system, the closest star system to our solar system at just 4.3 lights year’s distance, received specific mention as a potential mission destination.

Mr. Joosten and Dr. White stated that “a one-way, non-decelerating trip to Alpha Centauri under a constant one milli-g acceleration” from an EM drive would result in an arrival speed of 9.4 percent the speed of light and result in a total transit time from Earth to Alpha Centauri of just 92 years.

However, if the intentions of such a mission were to perform in-situ observations and experiments in the Alpha Centauri system, then deceleration would be needed.

This added component would result in a 130-year transit time from Earth to Alpha Centauri – which is still a significant improvement over the multi-thousand year timetable such a mission would take using current chemical propulsion technology.

The speeds discussed in the Alpha Centauri mission proposal are sufficiently low that relativity effects are negligible.

Bringing EM Drives to reality:

While such mission proposals are important to consider, equally as important are the considerations toward development of the needed technology and procurement long-lead items necessary to make this power technology a reality.

Specifically, a useful EM Drive for space travel would need a nuclear power plant of 1.0 MWe (Megawatts-electric) to 100 MWe.

While that sounds significant, the U.S. Navy currently builds 220 MW-thermal reactors for its “Boomer” Ohio class ICBM vehicles.

Thus, the technology to build such reactors is available, and the technology needed to build such a device for space-based operations has been around since the 1980s.

The limiting factors for further testing and development of this potentially revolutionary space exploration technology are funding to verify and characterize its operations, and the political will to develop nuclear power for space applications.

Progress Update:

On April 5, 2015, Paul March reported at NASAspaceflight.com’s Forum that Dr. White and Dr. Jerry Vera at NASA Eagleworks have just created a new computational code that models the EM Drive’s thrust as a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic flow of electron-positron virtual particles.

These simulations explain why in NASA’s experiments it was necessary to insert a high density polyethylene (HDPE) dielectric into the EM Drive, while the experiments in the UK and China were able to measure thrust without a dielectric insert.

The code shows two reasons for this: 1) the experiments in the UK and China used (unlike the ones in the US) a magnetron to generate the microwaves and 2) the experiments in the UK and China were performed with much higher input power: up to 2.5 kiloWatts, compared to less than 100 Watts in the US experiments.

In the US tests, microwave frequency generation was controlled via a voltage-controlled oscillator whose signal was passed to a variable voltage attenuator. The tests performed in the UK and China used, instead, magnetron microwave sources (as used in home-use microwave ovens) for their experiments.

The magnetron generates amplitude, frequency and phase modulation of the carrier wave (FM modulation bandwidth on the order of +/-20 MHz, at tested natural frequencies of ~2.5 GHz). Dr. White’s computer simulation shows that the modulation generated by the magnetron results in greater thrust force.

Dr. White’s computer analysis also shows that increasing the input power focuses the virtual particle flow from near omnidirectional at the low powers used in the NASA experiments, to a much more focused jet like beam at the higher power (kilowatts as compared to less than 100 Watts) used in the UK and China experiments.

The simulation for the 100 Watts input power (as used in the latest tests at NASA) predicted only ~50 microNewtons (in agreement with the experiments) using the HDPE dielectric insert, while the 10 kiloWatts simulation (without a dielectric) predicted a thrust level of ~6.0 Newtons. At 100 kiloWatts the prediction is ~1300 Newton thrust.

The computer code also shows that the efficiency, as measured by the thrust to input power ratio, decreases at input powers exceeding 50 kiloWatts.

A note of caution is that Dr. White’s simulations do not assume that the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable. The mainstream physics community assumes the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable because of the experimental observation that a fundamental particle like an electron (or a positron) has the same properties (e.g. mass, charge or spin), regardless of when or where the particle was created, whether now or in the early universe, through astrophysical processes or in a laboratory.

Another reason is that the Quantum Vacuum is assumed to be the lowest possible (time-averaged) energy that a quantum physical system may have, and therefore it should not be possible to extract momentum or energy from the Quantum Vacuum.

Due to these predictions by Dr. White’s computer simulations NASA Eagleworks has started to build a 100 Watt to 1,200 Watt waveguide magnetron microwave power system that will drive an aluminum EM Drive shaped like a truncated cone.

Initially a teeter-totter balance system will be used in ambient conditions to see if similar thrust levels (0.016 to 0.3 Newton) as reported in the US and China can be reproduced at NASA with this approach.

For the last three years, Dr. White’s team has been conducting experiments to find out whether it is possible to measure, with an interferometer, a distortion of spacetime produced by time-varying electromagnetic fields.

The ultimate goal is to find out whether it is possible for a spacecraft traveling at conventional speeds to achieve effective superluminal speed by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it. The experimental results so far had been inconclusive.

During the first two weeks of April of this year, NASA Eagleworks may have finally obtained conclusive results. This time they used a short, cylindrical, aluminum resonant cavity excited at a natural frequency of 1.48 GHz with an input power of 30 Watts.

This is essentially a pill-box shaped EM Drive, with much higher electric-field intensity, aligned in the axial direction. The interferometer’s laser light goes through small holes in the EM Drive.

Over 27,000 cycles of data (each 1.5 sec cycle energizing the system for 0.75 sec and de-energizing it for 0.75 sec) were averaged to obtain a power spectrum that revealed a signal frequency of 0.65 Hz with amplitude clearly above system noise. Four additional tests were successfully conducted that demonstrated repeatability.

One possible explanation for the optical path length change is that it is due to refraction of the air. The NASA team examined this possibility and concluded that it is not likely that the measured change is due to transient air heating because the experiment’s visibility threshold is forty times larger than the calculated effect from air considering atmospheric heating.

Encouraged by these results, NASA Eagleworks plans to next conduct these interferometer tests in a vacuum.

[Malsua]

It's a totally awesome concept and apparently sorta works. Now if they can just engineer this thing to work in the real world....of space.

[Ryan Ruck]

NASA Reveals Successful Test Of 'Impossible' Fuel-Free Engine That Breaks The Laws Of Physics

November 6, 2015

An 'impossible' fuel-free engine, which could take a humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, is still defying science after another batch of tests by NASA suggested the thruster does work.

The so-called EM Drive creates thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed chamber, and uses only solar power.

When the concept was first proposed, it was considered implausible because it went against the laws of physics - and subsequent tests of the engine have shown that the idea could revolutionise space travel.

Now NASA has provided the first update on the test in months, and it seems to suggest that the futuristic engine does, in fact, work.


A prototype of the 'impossible' fuel-free engine that could power a spacecraft to Mars in just 10 weeks

Scientists, however, still don't know why.

The update was given by Paul March, one of the top engineers working the EM Drive thruster at the Eagleworks Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

He said NASA has managed to remove some of the errors from earlier tests - but still found signals of unexplained thrust.

Among the criticisms of previous experiments were that the tests were not carried out in a vacuum, thereby mirroring the conditions in space.

But the latest NASA test appears to have addressed these concerns.

March's announcement is the first direct announcement in months, with the space agency largely remaining silent about any developments on the controversial project.

March posted on the NASA Spaceflight forum in reply to an unpublished paper that claims the unaccounted thrust is generated by something known as the Lorentz force.

The Lorentz force is the force that is exerted by a magnetic field on a moving electric charge.

But March says his tests prove this is not true.

'I will tell you that we first built and installed a second generation, closed face magnetic damper that reduced the stray magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber by at least an order of magnitude and any Lorentz force interactions it could produce,' he said

'And yet the anomalous thrust signals remain.'

March also says that in the latest developments, thermal expansion of the thruster is taken into account to reduce all possible sources of error.

But the thrust can still be seen, and engineers still can't explain what's causing it.

If it becomes operational, the EM Drive propulsion system would permit travel at speeds until now only seen in science fiction and have other implications for space exploration.

The fact that it's a recurring phenomenon now makes the EM Drive appear less of a ridiculous concept and more of real solution to deep space travel.


One of the images from an as-yet unpublished paper on the EMDrive, revealing the magnetic fields of the device

Researchers say the new drive could carry passengers and their equipment to the moon in as little as four hours, or to Mars in 10 weeks.

A trip to Alpha Centauri, which would take tens of thousands of years to reach under current methods, could be reached in just 100 years. And as the thrusters are solar powered, propulsion would be generated along the way.

The system is based on electromagnetic drive, or EM Drive, which converts electrical energy into thrust without the need for rocket fuel.

While there has been some scepticism surrounding the EM Drive, in April NASA released results of their own test which showed that the EM Drive did in fact create thrust.

'Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics' expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum,' announced NASASpaceFlight.com in April

The site has become an unofficial source of EM Drive news, with NASA engineers reportedly posting on its forum.


While there has been some scepticism around the EMDrive, in April NASA released results of its own test which showed that the EMDrive did in fact create thrust. Pictured is an experimental set-up to test the system

Earlier this year, German scientists also backed NASA's claim that the engines do work.

Martin Tajmar, professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, presented a paper to the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum in July.

Tajmar wrote: 'Additional tests need to be carried out to study the magnetic interaction of the power feeding lines used for the liquid metal contacts.'

'Nevertheless, we do observe thrusts close to the magnitude of the actual predictions after eliminating many possible error sources that should warrant further investigation into the phenomena.

'Next steps include better magnetic shielding, further vacuum tests and improved EM Drive models with higher Q factors and electronics that allow tuning for optimal operation.'

According to classical physics, the EM Drive should be impossible because it seems to violate the law of conservation of momentum.

The law states that the momentum of a system is constant if there are no external forces acting on the system – which is why propellant is required in traditional rockets.

Researchers from the US, UK and China have demonstrated EM Drives over the past few decades, but their results have been controversial as no one has been exactly sure how it works.

When London-based Roger Sawyer came up with concept in 2000, the only team that took him seriously was a group of Chinese scientists.

In 2009, the team allegedly produced 720 millinewton (or 72g) of thrust, enough to build a satellite thruster. But still, nobody believed they had achieved this.

Last year, Pennsylvania-based scientist Guido Fetta and his team at NASA Eagleworks published a paper that demonstrates that a similar engine works on the same principles.

Their model, dubbed Cannae Drive, produces much less thrust at 30 to 50 micronewtons - less than a thousandth of the output of some relatively low-powered ion thrusters used today.

On the NasaSpaceFlight.com, those allegedly involved in the project claim that the reason previous EM Drive models were criticised were that none of the tests had been carried out in a vacuum.

Physics says particles in the quantum vacuum cannot be ionised, so therefore you cannot push against it. But Nasa's latest test claims to have shown otherwise.

'Nasa has successfully tested their EmDrive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organisation has reported such a successful test,' the researchers wrote.

'To this end, Nasa Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.'

However, Nasa's official site said earlier this year: 'There are many "absurd" theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research.

'But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream.'

[Malsua]

Ok, so if this works, and "free energy" is being produced, then it's just a matter of engineering to scale it up. If this one can drive a generator that drives a bigger one, and so on, eventually, you should be able to power the entire country with a 1.5v AAA cell.

As a note, I'm not shitting on the concept. It's really that it is a propellant free drive. I suspect the energy is coming from something that is degrading so that all those pesky Newtonian laws are still being enforced.
I.E if you run this thing long enough, the entire cone disintegrates or something like that.

[American Patriot]

Newtonian physics be damned, Scotty Physics, FULL WARP DRIVE FOLKS!

I saw a thing on transparent aluminium today too, by the way.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/11/transparent-aluminum/

Transparent Aluminum Now A Reality

By Edwin Kee on 11/03/2015

The way mankind has progressed is impressive to say the least, and what was once in the realm of science fiction has once again, become reality. What am I referring to? Well, I remember transparent aluminum in Star Trek: The Voyage Home? (watch the clip below) Well, it seems that transparent aluminum is as real as it gets today, thanks to US Naval Research Laboratory scientist Dr. Jas Sanghera who described it as “actually a mineral, it’s magnesium aluminate. The advantage is it’s so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass. It provides better protection in more hostile environments—so it can withstand sand and rain erosion.”
Being a more durable material, it will boast of a thinner layer of spinel which is touted to deliver a better level of performance as opposed to glass. When one takes weight-sensitive platforms such as UAVs (unmanned autonomous vehicles, or “drones”), and head-mounted face shields, you can be sure that this is a technology that will change the way we see the world work.
Sanghera further describes the manufacturing process, so to speak, “You put the powder in [a hot press], you press it under vacuum, squash this powder together—and if you can do that right, then you can get rid of all the entrapped air, and all of a sudden it comes out of there clear-looking.” When the sheet is fresh off the press, it will be ground and polished before being refined further into other uses like bulletproof glass. Should the cost come down in due time, then consumer applications will also benefit, including smartphones and watches.
Filed in General. Read more about science.

[Ryan Ruck]

Actually Mal, the inverse is apparently true. This engine requires a decent bit of energy (I think I saw reference to a 2MW generator for a spacecraft) but no physical fuel in the traditional sense to produce its thrust. I believe I also saw the efficiency ratio of energy required to thrust produced somewhere and it wasn't all that great. Of course, it's not even a first gen version of this engine but a small scale prototype. Perhaps as they scale up and figure out improvements, the efficiency will improve.

[American Patriot]

Physics.

Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy.

It's not producing anything other than thrust it sounds like. I've not read the formulas yet, but it looks like a lot of people are saying it's impossible because it's not using anything to create the thrust.

Ryan, you're correct on the massive nuclear generator. lol

[Ryan Ruck]

It's Official: NASA's Peer-Reviewed EM Drive Paper Has Finally Been Published

It works.

November 19, 2016

After months of speculation and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system really does appear to work.

The NASA Eagleworks Laboratory team even put forward a hypothesis for howthe EM Drive could produce thrust – something that seems impossible according to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

In case you've missed the hype, the EM Drive, or Electromagnetic Drive, is a propulsion system first proposed by British inventor Roger Shawyer back in 1999.

Instead of using heavy, inefficient rocket fuel, it bounces microwaves back and forth inside a cone-shaped metal cavity to generate thrust.
According to Shawyer's calculations, the EM Drive could be so efficient that it could power us to Mars in just 70 days.

But, there's a not-small problem with the system. It defies Newton's third law, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction.

According to the law, for a system to produce thrust, it has to push something out the other way. The EM Drive doesn't do this.

Yet in test after test it continues to work. Last year, NASA's Eagleworks Laboratory team got their hands on an EM Drive to try to figure out once and for all what was going on.

And now we finally have those results.

The new peer-reviewed paper is titled "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum", and has been published online as an open access 'article in advance' in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)’s Journal of Propulsion and Power. It'll appear in the December print edition.

It's very similar to the paper that was leaked online earlier this month and, most notably, shows that the drive does indeed produce 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of thrust in a vacuum:

"Thrust data from forward, reverse, and null suggested that the system was consistently performing at 1.2 ± 0.1 mN/kW, which was very close to the average impulsive performance measured in air. A number of error sources were considered and discussed."

To put that into perspective, the super-powerful Hall thruster generates force of 60 millinewtons per kilowatt, an order of magnitude more than the EM Drive.
But the Hall thruster requires propellants, and that extra weight could offset the higher thrust, the team concludes.

Light sails on the other hand, which are currently the most popular form of zero-propellant propulsion, only generate force up to 6.67 micronewtons per kilowatt – two orders of magnitude less than NASA's EM Drive, says the paper.

But the team makes it clear that they also weren't attempting to optimise performance in these tests – all they were doing was trying to prove whether or not the drive really works. So it's likely that the EM Drive could get a lot more efficient still.

When it comes to how the drive actually works without messing up the laws of physics, that's a little less clear.

It's not the focus of this paper, but the team does offer a hypothesis:

"[The] supporting physics model used to derive a force based on operating conditions in the test article can be categorised as a nonlocal hidden-variable theory, or pilot-wave theory for short."

Pilot-wave theory is a slightly controversial interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It's pretty complicated stuff, but basically the currently accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that particles do not have defined locations until they are observed.

Pilot-wave theory, on the other hand, suggests that particles do have precise positions at all times, but in order for this to be the case, the world must also be strange in other ways – which is why many physicists have dismissed the idea.

But in recent years, the pilot-wave theory has been increasing in popularity, and the NASA team suggests that it could help explain how the EM Drive produces thrust without appearing to propel anything in the other direction.

"If a medium is capable of supporting acoustic oscillations, this means that the internal constituents were capable of interacting and exchanging momentum," the team writes.

"If the vacuum is indeed mutable and degradable as was explored, then it might be possible to do/extract work on/from the vacuum, and thereby be possible to push off of the quantum vacuum and preserve the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum."

Of course, this is just one hypothesis, based on one round of tests. There's a lot more work to be done before we can say for sure whether the EM Drive is really producing thrust – the team notes they that more research is needed to eliminate the possibility that thermal expansion could somehow be skewing the results.

And even once that's confirmed, we'll then need to figure out exactly how the system works.

The scientific community is also notoriously unconvinced about the propulsion system – just yesterday a Motherboard article on the EM Drive was deleted by the moderators of the popular subreddit r/Physics because they "consider the EM Drive to be unscientific".

But is the first peer-reviewed research ever published on the EM Drive, which firmly takes it out of the realm of pseudoscience into a technology that's worth taking skeptically, but seriously.

The next step for the EM Drive is for it to be tested in space, which is scheduled to happen in the coming months, with plans to launch the first EM Drive having been made back in September.

If it produces thrust there, the scientific community will need to sit up and take note. Watch this space.

You can read the full research paper here.

[American Patriot]

The internet "experts" said it's bullshit. Being one of those "internet experts" I pointed out that Newtons third law isn't in any way violated because you are indeed producing energy (microwaves) and light (photons) and them mixing them in a mixing chamber.

LOL


I'm sure I didn't have a lot of time to read the paper through and to explain it accurately to all the "experts" out there.... but, you know, physics was my LIFE for 40 years, so what do I know?

[Malsua]

This thing is not over-unity. It creates thrust, no one has figured out the science of why, but the proof is before your eyes. It works. You can figure out the why later, but for now, scale the fucker up and get it into space.

[American Patriot]

That's what I say too. Get going. Let's do this. We can. America is the greatest country in the world. Let's be the greatest in space again.

[Ryan Ruck]

This thing is not over-unity. It creates thrust, no one has figured out the science of why, but the proof is before your eyes. It works. You can figure out the why later, but for now, scale the fucker up and get it into space.

Yep, this thing is a lot like a Model A. The Ferrari will come in due time.

If you start bringing in superconducting materials and the like that may well change the game.

Now we just need to work on that whole relativity thing...

[American Patriot]

I can't wait until they fire it up in space and the Vulcans detect the Warp Signature.

[Ryan Ruck]

China Says Tests Of Propellentless EMDrive On Tiangong 2 Space Station Were Successful

December 20, 2016

Dr. Chen Yue, Director of Commercial Satellite Technology for the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) announced on December 10, 2016 that not only has China successfully tested EmDrives technology in its laboratories, but that a proof-of-concept is currently undergoing zero-g testing in orbit (according to the International Business Times, this test is taking place on the Tiangong 2 space station).

Scientists with the China Academy of Space Technology claim NASA’s results ‘re-confirm’ what they’d already achieved, and have plans to implement it in satellites ‘as quickly as possible.’

‘The establishment of an experimental verification platform to complete the milli-level micro thrust measurement test, as well as several years of repeated experiments and investigations into corresponding interference factors, confirm that in this type of thruster, thrust exists.

Cast is a subsidiary of the Chinese Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and the manufacturer of Dong Fang Hong satellites.

According to Li Feng, chief designer of Cast’s communication satellite division, the team has built a prototype that so far generates just a few millinewtons of thrust, IBTimes UK reports.

A chinese language paper posted the successful chinese tests of the Emdrive

Successful propellentless Emdrive is tests in microgravity in space would be conclusive and definitive.



A table of space mission parameters was calculated by Jon C. Rogers for the book Spaceship Handbook.

Six trajectories are listed

Three impulse (rocket) types and three constant acceleration brachistochrone types.

EMdrive could enable constant acceleration and brachistochrone trajectories. Currently emdrive propulsion is still in the millinewton(s) range. However, driving it with more power or finding other ways to scale the propulsion could achieve 0.01g or higher acceleration.

"Impulse" means the spacecraft makes an initial burn then coasts for months, which is a standard rocket mission.

Impulse trajectory I-1 is pretty close to a Hohmann (minimum delta V / maximum time) orbit, but with a slightly higher delta V.

Impulse trajectory I-2 is in-between I-1 and I-3 (it is equivalent to an elliptical orbit from Mercury to Pluto, the biggest elliptical orbit that will fit inside the solar system).

Impulse trajectory I-3 is near the transition between delta V levels for high impulse trajectories and low brachistochrone trajectories (it is a hyperbolic solar escape orbit plus 30 km/s).

Brachistochrone (maximum delta V / minimum time) trajectories are labeled by their level of constant acceleration: 0.01 g, 0.10 g, and 1.0 g.



If you had a ten ton spacecraft. To accelerate at 1 G you need about 100,000 Newtons
If you had a ten ton spacecraft. To accelerate at 0.01 G you need 1,000 Newtons
If you had a ten ton spacecraft. To accelerate at 0.0001 G you need 10 Newtons

With a good nuclear reactor, a high energy consumption Emdrive could be powered for decades.



It would take 100 weeks at 0.01G acceleration to get to 1.95% of light speed.

[Ryan Ruck]

I missed this one from October...

Shawyer Claims Much Higher Thrust for Second-Generation EmDrive, Files New Patent Application

October 17, 2016

The “anomalous” or “impossible” space propulsion system EmDrive has been often in the news in the last few months. First, the rumor – then confirmed – that the latest experimental results of the NASA Eagleworks team will be published in December in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)’s Journal of Propulsion and Power, a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Then a select, invitation-only three-day workshop in Colorado, the Estes Park Advanced Propulsion Workshop organized by the Space Studies Institute (SSI), featured presentations by NASA Eagleworks scientist Paul March and Prof. Martin Tajmar, chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, who last year presented an independent confirmation of the anomalous EmDrive thrust.

First proposed by Satellite Propulsion Research, a research company based in the UK founded by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer, the EmDrive concept was predictably scorned by much of the mainstream research community for allegedly violating the laws of physics, including the conservation of momentum. However, recent studies indicate that the apparently missing momentum could be explained, without violating fundamental conservation laws, by new theoretical models.

The Estes Park Workshop had a special focus on James Woodward’s “Mach Effect” (aka “Woodward Effect“) Drive. According to a study presented at the Workshop, the anomalous EmDrive effect could be related to the exotic physics behind the Mach/Woodward effect and the Hoyle/Narlikar theory of gravitation.

Previously, NASA Eagleworks leader Dr. Harold G. “Sonny” White had proposed that the EmDrive’s thrust could be due to virtual particles in the quantum vacuum that behave like propellant ions in magneto-hydrodynamical propulsion systems, extracting “fuel” from the very fabric of space-time and eliminating the need to carry propellant. While a number of scientists criticized White’s theoretical model, others felt that he was at least pointing to the right direction.

Patent Application: Superconducting Microwave Radiation Thruster


Now, the UK Intellectual Property Office has released the latest EmDrive patent application from Shawyer, titled “Superconducting microwave radiation thruster.” The patent application describes a new thruster design with a single flat superconducting plate on one end, and a uniquely shaped, non-conducting plate on the other end.

“The patent process is a very significant process, it’s not like an academic peer review where everyone hides behind an anonymous review, it’s all out in the open,” said Shawyer, as reported by International Business Times. “This is a proper, professional way of establishing prior ownership done by professionals in the patent office, and in order to publish my patent application, they had to first carry out a thorough examination of the physics in order to establish that the invention does not contravene the laws of physics.”

Shawyer, who has already been granted three EmDrive-related patents, has also another patent application in process.

New Superconducting EmDrive Thruster Technology Under Development


According to Shawyer, the second generation of EmDrive will produce thrust much higher than that observed by Eagleworks and other labs. In a paper titled titled “Second generation EmDrive propulsion applied to SSTO launcher and interstellar probe,” published in December 2015 in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Astronautica, Shawyer touched on the world-changing implications:

Second generation EmDrive offers the best solution for low cost access to space, and for a near term interstellar mission.

Shawyer’s EmDrive website claims that development work is continuing on superconducting EmDrive thruster technology in co-operation with a UK aerospace company.

No details of this work can be divulged at present.

The video below, a slide presentation narrated by Shawyer, explains the basic science behind EmDrive.