Topic: 'The 'impossible' EmDrive could reach Pluto in 18 months' !!! (Read 1640 times)

Not really true - it needs to be tested in space, which means getting a package on a satellite soon, not in the typical ten years it takes.

Is the EM Drive Is Getting The Appropriate Level Of Attention From The Science Community

There have been many news stories saying that the EM Drive will solve almost all problems in interplanetary travel, permit low cost flying cars and who knows what else. Other stories say that it is flat out impossible and we shouldn't spend a single publicly funded research dollar on it. But I haven't seen a single article with the rather boring suggestion that perhaps in this case the research community has got it exactly right. That it's not a perpetual motion machine, doesn't deserve to be dismissed out of hand. But it's far too soon to justify huge research programs into it, even if it is a real effect. We just have to be patient and see how the experiment develops. So, here is a news story to say - that. In detail:


http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/suggestion_the_em_drive_is_getting_the_appropriate_level_of_attention_from_the_science_community-156719

Now NASA's a nation?   

hmmm...

all the other nations too?

Of course, there are those who seem to have a more stable, better explanation of how our universe works, They suggest that the universe is electric. Plenty of electricity. http://electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm

TL;DR

Rotating asymmetric capacitors are '50s technology.

Tin-foil hat on, I have my doubts space travel is even possible. NASA lies about absolutely everything. 

I consider this as crazy talk, because the emdrive must have electric power to operate.  It is easy to figure the amount of electric power required to power aircraft at various L/D lift to drag and P/w power to weight ratios.  Although Emdrive may work for space where do you get electric power for aircraft?

1 hp = 762 watts.

1000 hp aircraft engine = 762,000 watts.

What size generator?  Powered by what?  A gasoline motor?  If so why not just run the gasoline into an jet turbine?

EmDrive: Roger Shawyer paper describing space propulsion on UAVs finally passes peer review


The creator of a controversial electromagnetic space propulsion technology called EmDrive has finally had a paper peer reviewed and accepted by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).

The paper, Second Generation EmDrive Propulsion Applied To SSTO Launcher And Interstellar Probe, by British scientist Roger Shawyer was published in the journal Acta Astronautica and made available online on 10 July.

Shawyer conceptualised and developed the space propulsion technology EmDrive and first presented this in 1999. Shawyer proposes that 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.

Shawyer spent years having his technology ridiculed by the international space science research community and being called a fraud. According to Shawyer, if the technology is ever commercially realised, EmDrive could transform the aerospace industry and potentially solve the energy crisis and climate change, while also speeding up space travel by making it much cheaper to launch satellites and spacecraft into orbit.

His critics say that according to the law of conservation of momentum, his theory cannot work as in order for a thruster to gain momentum in one direction a propellent must be expelled in the opposite direction, and the EmDrive is a closed system. However, Shawyer claims that following fundamental physics involving the theory of special relativity, the EmDrive does in fact preserve the law of conservation of momentum and energy.

Testing the EmDrive on unmanned aerial vehicles

Shawyer's paper builds on his previous research on the first generation EmDrive device he created, which he says produced 200 milliNewtons (20g) of force. A German experimental scientist recently published results showing his testing of EmDrive was also able to create thrust, but that only equated to 20 microNewtons. He further stated that the results "cannot confirm or refute the claims of the EmDrive."

The most amount of thrust that has ever been achieved comes from the tests conducted by Chinese scientists in 2012, which produced 720 milliNewtons (72g) of thrust in a system built using a completely different theoretical method from Shawyer's method.

Shawyer claims a race is on and the second-generation EmDrive is being developed by several players privately including himself, and the new version of the device would be able to achieve tonnes of thrust (1T = 1,000kg) rather than just a few grams.

His paper lays out two specific use cases for the EmDrive, which includes providing a way for the 10 tonne Boeing X37-B space plane to fly into orbit on its own, deliver a payload of two tonnes and come back to Earth on its own.

At the moment, the X37-B has to be launched from a rocket, but DARPA is working on a new robotic space plane called the XS-1 that it hopes to flight test in 2017, and Shawyer believes EmDrive could help.

However, he has now decided that it would be better to focus on putting EmDrive on to unmanned aerial vehicles, with the view to eventually use the technology in the automobile industry to create feasible flying cars.

"Our aim at the moment is not to necessarily go for these space applications, because they will take so long to come to fruition. So what we've decided as a company is to forget space, and to go for terrestrial transport business, which is huge," Shawyer told IBTimes UK.

"The logic is, if you can lift a vehicle reasonably gently with no large accelerations, then you can manufacture the air frame using much lower technology than would be used on an aircraft."


Flying cars more likely than super-fast space travel





Shawyer says his firm, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd, is currently designing a drone that has no propellers or wings, and it plans to carry out the first test flights powered by EmDrive microwave space propulsion in 2017.

Flying cars are currently being invented and prototypes do exist, but they are not exactly cars, but rather, an amalgamation of a car and an aeroplane. Two companies are trying to push this type of technology forward, Terrafugia and Aeromobil, but so far the world has not shown much interest.

"If you're trying to build a flying car, you don't start with an aeroplane, you start with a car. It makes it low cost and more affordable to manufacture an airframe that is more like an automobile body," said Shawyer.

"Hydrogen storage and fuel cells are available and affordable – all of this is in place. People are sick of travelling in two dimensions and sitting in traffic jams. You need to use the three dimensions. Space is a waste of time as it's so slow, and it's not a very big market. Mass transportation and other things are a much bigger market and major automobile manufacturers will be interested."


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-roger-shawyer-paper-describing-space-propulsion-uavs-finally-passes-peer-review-1513223

Well, first of all, whatever the thrust of this thing, if it works, the solar system is opened up.  Period.  "Useful once it's in orbit" is a really big deal - not a little unimportant thing.

Second, if it does 1/2 meter per second second, then it would keep an airplane in level flight as long as that airplane has > 10/1 glide ratio, which practically all do.  I'll remain skeptical about that, but remember that isn't really important.  We've got good engines for planes, trains, cars, etc.

We don't have really good space engines.

we are talking about solar system exploration without needing to spend propellant to make it go (once it's in orbit). That changes things dramatically. Right now virtually all space travel (with the exception of some preliminary solar sail tests) is done on the principle of shooting particles out the back of the spacecraft at high speeds, whether propelled by chemical reaction (low efficiency high thrust) or electromagnetically accelerated ionized gas (high efficiency low thrust). That means you have to spend fuel to accelerate the fuel you're carrying with you. This creates a nasty feedback loop. This thruster would change all that since it doesn't use propellant, it just needs electricity which it can get "for free" from the sun. The low thrust of the first generation design means it will only be useful once you're in orbit, but once there you can slowly accelerate persistently.

According to some tests and predictions this should produce more thrust than an ion engine, but still far less than a chemical rocket. That's ok though because you can leave it on for as long as you have power and as long as the device will work (expected lifetime around 15 years I think according to the inventor?). NASA's version produced about as much thrust as a typical ion engine. A second generation design being proposed by the inventor is said to be capable of producing even more acceleration, around half a meter per second^2, so it could supplement air travel and even assist payloads in getting to space, but it would require liquid cryogenics (which would eventually be consumed). It still remains to be proven, but at least the initial NASA test yielded surprisingly positive results. We'll see.

Forget the media hype.  Those are exaggerations.  Think of a low thrust ion type drive.

Reddit link was earlier in this thread to people building the things.

yea the EM drive its so amazing!!! it will open so many new door is "local" space exploration!!

Btw what company is making those "test" engines??

time to buy stock of them if possible 

Um, I think you have to abandon the particle theories and think wave functions.

But even then, you are only voicing the objections that everyone SHARES WITH YOU.

Darn it, they just report the thing works.

I doubt Chinese would spend money on another western "hoax"  the thing is, that emdrive wasnt tried outside laboratory environment. There is currently no commercial version of it. However, same thing once applied to steam engines.

Thats why I asked for diagram.

If it's all legit, then why can't they just make a friggen diagram that explains it FULLY?

They waffle on about the intense microwave radiation having a group velocity, fair enough, I actually kind-of get that. The horn shape does some impedance conversion, reducing the speed of light at the throat section, thus reducing the momentum of the photons in that region. Fair enough. At the mouth of the horn, there is lower pressure, higher velocity, it's closer to a vacuum so the photons are heavier and faster. Fair enough.

But we're meant to believe that the whole thing will move by itself? Along with the photons that are dragged along for the ride? Bullshit. If it's not reaction-less then where the hell is the reaction mass? Guess what? I can also defy gravity! By slowly decreasing the height of some gym weights while standing on bathroom scales, I can also produce a few milli-Newtons of thrust! Epic government grants -- oh yeah!!

This is all very new to me. Exciting.

But it is very hard to even imagine this supposed answer for space, maritime, land and air travel. Is there video of working engine? Or even 3d CAD visualization? Various descriptions by media as "Star trek warp drive, rocket drive or "like a jet engine" are not helpful at all. Those technologies are all fundamentally different.

I am all ears.

As a reminder, the full interview of Roger Shawyer in 3 youtube videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL_KA9gR6zLeFFjbODQ6zngUaGIE49jAH9&v=GGTjy6atKMs


 

'Impossible' rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours


Interplanetary travel could be a step closer after scientists confirmed that an electromagnetic propulsion drive, which is fast enough to get to the Moon in four hours, actually works.

The EM Drive was developed by the British inventor Roger Shawyer nearly 15 years ago but was ridiculed at the time as being scientifically impossible.

It produces thrust by using solar power to generate multiple microwaves that move back and forth in an enclosed chamber. This means that until something fails or wears down, theoretically the engine could keep running forever without the need for rocket fuel.

The drive, which has been likened to Star Trek’s Impulse Drive, has left scientists scratching their heads because it defies one of the fundamental concepts of physics – the conservation of momentum – which states that if something is propelled forward, something must be pushed in the opposite direction. So the forces inside the chamber should cancel each other out.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11769030/Impossible-rocket-drive-works-and-could-get-to-Moon-in-four-hours.html

OK. like a jet engine... But in that case what is it pushing against? It is supposed to work in an absolute vacuum.

Playing with a microwave and try to boost its strength, while not isolated, may not be the best of ideas, even in your own home. Bitcoin needs everyone, especially the ones I do not agree with  You should let other non bitcoiners have all the fun on that one IMHO, especially if you have or want children

 

Could that just be like a jet engine where everything is just cooling down? You have that a lot with electronic devices where there's heat etc. still going, hell, if it's that easy to build I might try it at some point, would be interesting to see if you can do experiments to get that thrust higher. I may not know a lot about the mathematical side of this, but I very much like the idea of tinkering and inventing, I need to get my own house before I can mess with that kind of stuff though, I also want to play around with electricity generation.

Oh fun. Be in prison for 18 months there and 18 months back, and all the while that you are there.

Life's a beach.

The emdrive theory paper only shows results while "charging up" the cavity by pulsing the power on for 50 seconds, but not while discharging. My guess is that they're covering up a restoring force in the opposite direction when the power is removed. That could still be useful for satellites so they can make small adjustments without lossy propulsion systems, but they'll need to do better than that for transferring mass over long distances.

Y I'm not seeing the physics behind that, you'd think some capacitive or tank circuit, but where?

RE danger of building these, maybe think of it as turning on a magnetron from a microwave.....with no microwave or it's shielding.....

Problem is of course, shielding, air, virtually everything affects measurement of thrust, except for nothing, which is the definition of a vaccuum.

So it's off to reddit time, to see what people are doing in their garages with this stuff.

Hmm.. Still thrust after disconnection? Interesting.

The paper of tajmar was already released yesterday.
there is stll no conclusive findings about the emdrive theory.
but atleast he could exclude some of the possible errors in the analysing method.
( the thrust does't seem to be a error of analysing method... so far)

Something very interesting.
the emdrives  needs up to 10 seconds to build up thrust and after disconnecting from power it needs up to 10 secs before the thrust vanishes.

/edit

Building a test device is not hard because you can buy the stuff you need for a relative small amount of money. the problem is the analysis of the thrust because they are on the micro scale. Also you might want to test in vacuum too so a vacuum chamber would be pretty neat.

Im not sure how save it is to increase the power input for home devices ^_+

You can build your very own emdrive in your garage... For cheap.


It looks like a lot of people around here are starting to experiment with building their own test rigs. This is super cool, and I can't wait to see everyone's results!
From what we've seen, building a test rig is a fairly straightforward process, that looks something like this:
Build a copper frustum.
Shoot some microwaves into it.
Drive your Em.
There are a lot of finer points to it than that, but it's not like you need a particle accelerator in your garage to build one of these or anything. It's reasonably cheap, and reasonably easy, which is why so many people are giving it a shot.
So, with that said, I really want to make sure everyone is as safe as possible, so you should read through this if you're considering building a drive. This is sort of a "how to avoid killing yourself" post, NOT any kind of encouragement to do anything dangerous. If you aren't very familiar with electricity, I'd recommend you stick to discussion, rather than jump straight into hands-on work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/comments/3eerc7/lets_talk_about_emdrive_safety_and_legality/

There are two things going on here.  First is the idea of a low thrust EM engine, which they are testing.  I'd love to have enough tech data to build one in the garage.  (It may well be there is enough, lol...)

Second is the assertion that this drive - UNLIKE ion engines - is scalable by many orders of magnitude.

(Third - I am discounting this - is the assertion that this is a "warp drive."  This is an interesting question, but a DIFFERENT question.  Shawyer refutes it is a warp drive.)

#1 seems factual.

#2 is certainly interesting, but there are caveats.  I'm not certain of a simple way to explain them.  You must think in terms of elliptical trajectories between gravitational bodies, moons and planets, and acceleration and deacceleration.  Consider a trip to Mars that is with a single pulse chemical rocket burn, 8 months.  Now ask what small, continual acceleration matches that chemical rocket burn.

You are now comparing a 4 month slight acceleration against perhaps a 6 minute high acceleration.  4x30x24x60 = 172,800 minutes.   6*2/172800 = about 0.00006 of the chemical rocket thrust will equal it's performance in the 8 month orbit.  So if you ask, can we do with the EM drive, 1/1000 of the thrust of the chemical rocket?  That's a HUGE DEAL - it reduces the 8 months transit time down to a few days.

But it is still a very, very low thrust engine.  However, when you consider the relative positions of Earth and Mars, and the fact that the limitations of position mean we can only launch to Mars about every 4 years - the EM drive at 1/1000 thrust completely eliminates that issue.  Launch anytime, to any of the planets.  Yes, within in few days.

1/1000 the thrust of a chemical rocket, think in terms of 1 to 100 pounds of thrust.  Current thrust of test EM unit, a fraction of a newton.  Hence the claim that a production EMdrive could do this job is NOT UNREASONABLE.

Very interesting....

Ugh, I need to go and have a proper read of it again lol, either way you're right about it being like the ion drive, yes, even though the thrust is small it's very efficient. I think though even with engines like these, it will still be entirely capable of being improved to give the kind of speeds we'd expect.

The best way to conceptualize EMdrive is to consider it similar to ion drive space engines, which have very low thrust but can sustain that thrust for years.  These are very efficient engines for many missions, however they will not do something like the job of getting men to the moon in three days.

There is no relation between EMdrive and issues of EMP whatsoever.

From people who seem to actually know what this is all about, would you think it might be possible, if they get enough energy put together to shoot it off (or attempt even a smaller test than that), could that cause a nuclear EMP disaster?

Putting America in the dark - Little has been done to protect the nation from an electromagnetic pulse

No Warp Drive Here: NASA Downplays 'Impossible' EM Drive Space Engine http://www.space.com/29363-impossible-em-drive-space-engine-nasa.html

I can understand if it's being criticised by actual scientists, but they're running proper tests on it and making sure it's legit and even they're saying it's a genuine piece of technology now. I'm getting fed up of these news journalists who think they're experts on everything, they do the exact same crap with Bitcoin, write blatantly false information as if it's correct and then pretend nothing happened afterwards.

It would seem enough knowledgeable people have had a go at this. I'm certainly no expert but I do believe this could be slightly more complex than a simple misunderstanding.
As per the article, Tajmar's research paper "Direct Thrust Measurements of an EmDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects" which will be released within the next day or so should provide better insight.

The 'claiming it breaks the laws of physics' has more to do with media exaggerations.

Anyway it's great that Roger Shawyer's work is getting the attention it deserves  

Well that's the thing, I won't knock it until they build one and send it to space, but there are so called scientists who are debunking it before it even has a chance to be tested, now they're testing it, they're starting to have other ideas the hypocritical fucks. Also, I would like to point out the key is in the name 'EM' it uses electro magnetic waves not negative energy, it's basically a very very efficient engine that seems to be able run in a vacuum, but as usual people who know even less about science than I do are shitting on it or claiming it breaks the laws of physics when they don't even know them.

Here's the website of the inventor: http://emdrive.com/

Note: It looks like they've actually updated the website to show some real testing videos! nice!


Flight Test DEM 188 Results

Mean Thrusts 9.8gm
Maximum Velocity 2cm/sec
Flight Distance 185cm

That's not at all a large amount, however if you imagine how much it could be improved and what that would mean for space flight, you get the idea.

call me skeptical, but I still won't believe it until they put it into action. it's still just a theory.

Oh, are those fuckers finally starting to admit they were wrong about the EMDrive?

The future is now this is a must-read for sci-fi/tech fans. Seriously.
It appears that scientists have accidentally developed tech that could potentially allow for faster space travel. As a reference, it took New Horizons over 9 years to reach Pluto 


'Last summer WIRED revealed that Nasa's Eagleworks Lab was testing a copy of the EmDrive, a propulsion device frequently labelled as "impossible" because it appears to violate the law of conservation of momentum. Against all expectation they found it produced thrust. The response from the scientific community was dramatic, and generally sceptical -- but the "anomalous thrust" stubbornly refuses to disappear as more research zeroes in on it.'

Read the full article here: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/emdrive-space-drive-pluto-mission