New Test Suggests NASA's "Impossible" EM Drive Will Work In Space
125 replies, posted
[url]http://io9.com/new-test-suggests-nasas-impossible-em-drive-will-work-1701188933[/url]
[IMG]http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/1232381396342191717.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE]Last year, NASA’s advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. [B]Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum.[/B][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. There’s also a major discussion going on about the engine and the physics that drives it at the site’s forum.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The EM drive is controversial in that it appears to violate conventional physics and the law of conservation of momentum; the engine, invented by British scientist Roger Sawyer, converts electric power to thrust without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves within a closed container. So, with no expulsion of propellant, there’s nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum during acceleration. Hence the skepticism.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
The trouble with this theory, however, is that it might not work in a closed vacuum. After last year’s tests of the engine, which weren’t performed in a vacuum, skeptics argued that the measured thrust was attributable to environmental conditions external to the drive, such as natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating.
[B]The recent experiment, however, addressed this concern head-on, while also demonstrating the engine’s potential to work in space.[/B][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]It’s still early days, but the implications are mind-boggling to say the least. A full-fledged EM drive could be used on everything from satellites working in low Earth orbit, to missions to the Moon, Mars, and the outer solar system.
EM drives could also be used on multi-generation spaceships for interstellar travel. A journey to Alpha Centauri, which is “just” 4.3 light-years away, suddenly wouldn’t be so daunting. An EM drive working under a constant one milli-g acceleration would propel a ship to about 9.4% the speed of light, resulting in a total travel time of 92 years. But that’s without the need for deceleration; should we wish to make a stop at Alpha Centauri, we’d have to add another 38 years to the trip. Not a big deal by any extent of the imagination.[/QUOTE]
NASA forum:
[QUOTE][T]he 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.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]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.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/"]http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/[/URL]
is it time to be excited that this might be the real deal? [IMG]http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-science.gif[/IMG] tell us facepunch scientists!
Jesus, the title scared me for a second, thought it said Em drive impossible to use in space.
Aw boys are you ready to conquer the fucking universe?
[QUOTE=Rapscallion92;47639117]Aw boys are you ready to conquer the fucking universe?[/QUOTE]
First, we need to get to mars, THEN THE UNIVERSE IS OURS!!!
this tech will only get better and better if we keep experimenting with it. a ship with a fusion reactor and a more advanced version of this will get us around our system very fast in the near future
Really hope they can provide an explanation where the thrust is actually coming from. Pretty rad stuff.
[QUOTE=Swebonny;47639207]Really hope they can provide an explanation where the thrust is actually coming from. Pretty rad stuff.[/QUOTE]
it would be some real 40k shit if they can't figure it out but we still end up using it a lot anyways.
[quote]"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."
The trouble with this theory, however, is that it might not work in a closed vacuum.[/quote]
Almost. The trouble with that theory is that it's nonsense word salad with no basis in theory.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47639227]it would be some real 40k shit if they can't figure it out but we still end up using it a lot anyways.[/QUOTE]
"How does it work? Fuck if we know, but it does so we do it. Probably fine. Probably isn't tearing a hole into hell or anything."
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47639227]it would be some real 40k shit if they can't figure it out but we still end up using it a lot anyways.[/QUOTE]
Just tape some scripture excerpts onto the side of the engine and we should be fine.
God damn. It's so hard to want to make any sort of comment until this thing is sorted out because the journalism on it is absolutely the worst:
[url=http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-says-emdrive-does-work-it-may-have-also-created-star-trek-warp-drive-1499098]Nasa says EmDrive does work [B]and it may have also created a Star Trek warp drive[/B][/url]
No. No one with a decent reputation thinks this is a warp drive. A lot of this shit is coming up in forum posts and whatnot, not peer-reviewed results that have been critiqued and responded to by experts (and that's largely because no one working on the drive has any idea why it "works").
Aren't Eagleworks considered the crackpots of NASA? I'm only on a first year quantum mechanics module, but that explanation of its method of operation sounds... dumb.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47639227]it would be some real 40k shit if they can't figure it out but we still end up using it a lot anyways.[/QUOTE]
Just hope we don't open up the warp and unleash chaos during it's first test drive.
i09 is gawker. Are wet really going to believe this?
[QUOTE=Reds;47639295]Just tape some scripture excerpts onto the side of the engine and we should be fine.[/QUOTE]
Thousands of office clerks must be sacrificed daily just to keep the EMDrive functioning.
[QUOTE=Jcorp;47639371]Aren't Eagleworks considered the crackpots of NASA? I'm only on a first year quantum mechanics module, but that explanation of its method of operation sounds... dumb.[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. The EMDrive was on the cover of a magazine in 2008. They just recently were able to test it in a vacuum chamber. There's a reason for that: they get almost no funding.
[editline]1st May 2015[/editline]
Whoops, sorry, make that [I]New Scientist[/I] in 2006. Took almost a decade to get the resources to do a vacuum test.
[QUOTE=thrawn2787;47639417]i09 is gawker. Are wet really going to believe this?[/QUOTE]
Don't bother with that source, use the nasaspaceflight forum one: [url]http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/[/url]
What are some practical applications of this new tech?
[QUOTE=Svinnik;47639528]What are some practical applications of this new tech?[/QUOTE]
Propulsion.
[QUOTE=Svinnik;47639528]What are some practical applications of this new tech?[/QUOTE]
If what they say is actually true, going around space really fast, and keeping things in space better.
[quote]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.
...
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 [B]Earth to the surface of the moon within four hours.[/B]
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), [B]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.[/B]
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, [B]a mission to Mars would result in a 70-day transit from Earth[/B] to the red planet, a 90-day stay at Mars, and then another 70-day return transit to Earth.[/quote]
[editline]1st May 2015[/editline]
For Comparison, as early ago as the 1970's, the world record for sailing around the world was ~70 days.
We could do Earth to Mars in 70 days.
[editline]1st May 2015[/editline]
Whoops I mean late 1990's*
I'm a little confused by all the posts. So did it actually work but nobody knows why? (Not knowing as in it could be measurement errors or similar things.)
Or do those people just claim it works without any credible source that can confirm their experiments.
Basically we'd be entering the Age of Sail: Space Edition
[editline]1st May 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Mitsuma;47639582]I'm a little confused by all the posts. So did it actually work but nobody knows why? (Not knowing as in it could be measurement errors or similar things.)
Or do those people just claim it works without any credible source that can confirm their experiments.[/QUOTE]
Short dumbed down version: some scientist made a claim that they could make this thing that makes ships go really fast, but had no explanation as to why it worked. They claimed they got it to work, but not in a vacuum (aka doesn't mean shit for space). So NASA's EagleWorks takes it, and tests it in a vacuum. They say they got it to work, too. Still no explanation as to why.
[QUOTE=OvB;47639585]Basically we'd be entering the Age of Sail: Space Edition
[editline]1st May 2015[/editline]
Short dumbed down version: some scientist made a claim that they could make this thing that makes ships go really fast, but had no explanation as to why it worked. They claimed they got it to work, but not in a vacuum (aka doesn't mean shit for space). So NASA's EagleWorks takes it, and tests it in a vacuum. They say they got it to work, too. Still no explanation as to why.[/QUOTE]
Of course, the claims that it is reactionless are still completely unverified, but the vacuum test helps to eliminate some sources of error.
There was a package holiday boom 50 years after the invention of powered flight.
Maybe I'll be 70 years old and taking cheap space flights to Mars.
[QUOTE=Roll_Program;47639642]There was a package holiday boom 50 years after the invention of powered flight.
Maybe I'll be 70 years old and taking cheap space flights to Mars.[/QUOTE]
Seeing those martian rocks in person would be quite the experience. :v:
I'm still trying to get my mind around the whole "microwave radiation in an empty chamber creates reactionless propulsion" thing.
It just seems damn impossible, you cannot have an action that has no opposite reaction.
[QUOTE=Roll_Program;47639642]There was a package holiday boom 50 years after the invention of powered flight.
Maybe I'll be 70 years old and taking cheap space flights to Mars.[/QUOTE]
if you're really lucky, 70 will be the new 40 by then, too
I think Satan does it
So if this shit works in space, we would start seeing probes not needing any fuel to stay in orbit around planets, unlike the one that just smashed into mercury?
Wasn't this completely butchered by sensationalist journalism and made out to be something it isn't / far better than it is? Even the FB "I Fucking Love Science" page posted this, even though it doesn't have any solid sources.
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