Post: #1

Alright so I don't have a physics degree or anything, but as someone who's been interested in the cosmos since I was a kid, this seems like really big news, I'd love to hear input from the scientists on the board.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014...pace-drive

Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive

Quote: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.

Quote:"Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma."

This last line implies that the drive may work by pushing against the ghostly cloud of particles and anti-particles that are constantly popping into being and disappearing again in empty space. But the Nasa team has avoided trying to explain its results in favour of simply reporting what it found: "This paper will not address the physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster, but instead will describe the test integration, test operations, and the results obtained from the test campaign."

And here's a follow up to that article, I posted the most interesting part:

10 questions about Nasa's 'impossible' space drive answered

Quote:6. How does this get us to Mars?

The small but steady push of the EmDrive is a winner for space missions, gradually accelerating spacecraft to high speed.

The Nasa paper projects a 'conservative' manned mission to Mars from Earth orbit, with a 90-ton spacecraft driven by the new technology. Using a 2-megawatt nuclear power source, it can develop 800 newtons (180 pounds) of thrust. The entire mission would take eight months, including a 70-day stay on Mars.

This compares with Nasa's plans using conventional technology which takes six months just to get there, and requires several hundred tons to be put into Earth's orbit to start with. You also have to stay there for at least 18 months while you wait for the planets to align again for the journey back. The new drive provides enough thrust to overcome the gravitational attraction of the Sun at these distances, which makes manoeuvring much easier.

A less conservative projection has an advanced drive developing ten times as much thrust for the same power -- this cuts the transit time to Mars to 28 days, and can generally fly around the solar system at will, a true Nasa dream machine.

Finally, I originally came across the link on Reddit, and the comments are worth reading too:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comme...ace_drive/

Further Reading:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/18734...ally-works




I'd like to use this as a spring board to talk about space travel, the future of humanity in the solar system, etc. so feel free to speculate.

I remember posting a while back about how with everything Elon Musk and others are doing with SpaceX, I'd love to drop an "Earth's Orbit Data Sheet" when I'm older.

Well, perhaps now we'll see a "Mars Colony Game" thread in our lifetime.

Exciting stuff.

Post: #2

Color me skeptical.

IMO it's entirely possible that the Fetta rig's resonant circuit is simply pushing against the Earth's magnetic field.

Post: #3

(08-08-2014 02:17 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  Well, perhaps now we'll see a "Mars Colony Game" thread in our lifetime.

Players always playin'

Post: #4

I thought the interesting thing about this was that Chinese scientists said they'd tested this method 2 years ago.

Post: #5

We are probably going to see warp drive in the next 10 to 20 years. Wouldn't be surprised if once they start building spaceships with this thing, you see rapid colonization and space mining as the economy kicks into overdrive. A moon base is certainly on the horizon. Chinese need some place to go, space as in area, is going to be a big issue coming up here and Chinese want to have big families... The big economic recovery is on its way.

My own wife wants 6 or 7 kids, we are going to try for 20. We will need somewhere to put all these people.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aeros...near-earth

Quote:One big uncertainty for the study comes from the possible range of mineral wealth in suitable near-Earth asteroids; Elvis pointed out that his study's estimates ranged from $800 million to $8.8 billion. Such wildly different estimates make a big difference in determining which asteroids become worthwhile targets for commercial mining operations. (The study is in press at the journal Planetary and Space Science, but a a preprint is available at Arxiv.org.)

Post: #6

I don't know about warp drive, but what I do expect to see within the next 10-20 years is the unlocking of deep space - the costs for travel from LEO to any point in the solar system will be lowered by at least an order of magnitude.

The most likely propulsion stack to achieve this would be the VASIMR thruster, powered by a high beta fusion reactor.

Sending humans into deep space will still remain prohibitively expensive, but unmanned probes will be a different story.

Post: #7

(08-08-2014 02:17 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  Well, perhaps now we'll see a "Mars Colony Game" thread in our lifetime.

Exciting stuff.[/b]

First thing I am requesting is the new travel benchmark of red/blue cock carousal maps:

   

Post: #8

(08-08-2014 05:47 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  

(08-08-2014 02:17 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  Well, perhaps now we'll see a "Mars Colony Game" thread in our lifetime.

Players always playin'

How do you like your women? Blonde, brunette, redhead?

Post: #9

(08-08-2014 09:17 AM)Atlantic Wrote:  

(08-08-2014 02:17 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  Well, perhaps now we'll see a "Mars Colony Game" thread in our lifetime.

Exciting stuff.[/b]

First thing I am requesting is the new travel benchmark of red/blue cock carousal maps:

Hell yeah, man. I've also heard that bitches in the Deucalionis Regio are the baddest bitches in the galaxy. Super stoked to finally get to Mars for some of that golden honey suckle pussy.

Post: #10

The results are probably completely wrong. I hope they aren't, but I suspect they are. The big red flag was that NASA tried to make a control device/experiment where they wanted it to not work, but it worked anyway. Since there is no negative control, this is all highly suspicious. Also, I don't think they tested this in a hard vacuum.

Post: #11

Hmm interesting. I'd love a breakthrough like this though.

Post: #12

(08-08-2014 09:58 AM)Menace Wrote:  The results are probably completely wrong. I hope they aren't, but I suspect they are. The big red flag was that NASA tried to make a control device/experiment where they wanted it to not work, but it worked anyway. Since there is no negative control, this is all highly suspicious. Also, I don't think they tested this in a hard vacuum.

Correctamundo. No negative control, means they don't know what they're doing and the quantum vacuum plasma thruster in my pants is just as valid. That JSC propulsion group is pretty wack.

Langley had money looking at cold fusion as recently as a few years ago, sadly.

I get it that you can spend a small fraction of your budget looking at ideas currently at low technology level, but give me a break.

Post: #13

Hate to rain on your parade, I am not qualified to judge this at all, but here's a science blogger talking about why you should not so quickly accept this:

Quote: The abstract of their paper, which was presented at a propulsion conference in Cleveland, is freely available online. Reading it raises a number of red flags. The methodology description makes it unclear how much of the testing took place in a vacuum—essential for measuring a subtle thrust effect. The total amount of energy consumed seems to have been far more than the amount of measured thrust, meaning there was plenty of extra energy bouncing around that could have been a source of error.

Worst of all is this statement from the paper: “Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust.” In other words, the Cannae Drive worked when it was set up correctly—but it worked just as well when it was intentionally disabled set up incorrectly. Somehow the NASA researchers report this as a validation, rather than invalidation, of the device.

Did I say that was worst of all? I may have take that back. In the paper by White et al, they also write that the Cannae Drive “is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That last bit stopped me. What’s a quantum vacuum virtual plasma? I’d never heard the term, so I dropped a note to Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist whose work dives deeply into speculative realms of cosmology and quantum theory.

Carroll wrote back immediately, with a pointed message: “There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there. There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma. In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion. The whole thing is just nonsense. They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.” There is no theory to support the result, and there is no verified result to begin with.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthe...-VbMfldXQU

Post: #14

I read it in more detail....i am very cautiously optimistic; i think we should spend more money on this and run a test in actual space. Perhaps, get Elon Musk interested...a variant of this Quantum Drive is called the emDrive anyways...and "e.m" is the initials of Elon Musk. Hahaha. How apropos.

There are all sorts of speculation about how a more advance version will lead to not just flying space crafts, but flying cars from starwars or hoverboards like from "back to the future" movie, etc. especially, if room temperature superconductors were used.

Before getting carried away, my feeling about it is that it will come down to two things: either instrument error or the nonexistent quantum vacuum plasma, actual do exist. I mean, the thrust has to be produced by something simply because You cant just throw away the law of conservation of momentum.

I remember the kerfuffle over the faster-than-light neutrinoes from switzerland, later shown to be bunk. The math didnt add up, so the experimental results were gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and the experiment was repeated multiple times, until the FTL neutrinoes was found to be experimental error. (the erroneous experiment was supervised by a woman, by the way. Haha. Who the fuck does she think she is doing physics? marie fucking curie? get back in the kitchen, woman!)

For this Quantum Drive(Q.D.), let me repeat it again: you cannot throw away the laws of conservation of momentum, just like that. The Q.D. control setup also working is a big problem, like others have mentioned-- the whole point of control is to show negative results. In scientific experiment, if your control shows positive instead of negative, your results is not worth a toilet paper. The only caveat is that since this Q.D. was done by three different groups, the chinese, the american(cannae drive) and the british(the emDrive) and shown to work in all three; perhaps, we dont really understand what is going on enough to setup a proper experiment. The three different group succesful replication of the experiment multiple times, gave me pause. You cannot simply dismiss these results like that without further, rigorous study. Another sticking point is that there are no known theoretical framework under-girding this experimental results...for now anyways.

While the Chinese version apparently produced enough thrust to lift a couple of ounces, i instinctively disregard Chinese experimental results because... well, it is Chinese experimental results.

The only thing to do is to conduct more experiments and clear this up. That is the only way forward.

here is a list of frequently asked questions about the emDrive and how they address it: http://emdrive.com/faq.html

Anyways, one of the most valiant attempt to understand and explain the experimental results was done by commentator "skarzog" using radiation pressure hypothesis/classical electro-magneticism. Short summary: He is basically saying that difference in radiation pressure at either ends of an asymmetrical cylinder may cause the thrust.

Anyways, here is a more detailed explanation by him:

Yea, I'm not very good at explaining things. But to break it down in its simplest form according to the English team's interpretation would be this...

When I talk about a hollow waveguide such as the cylinder I am speaking about a structure which will constrict an EM wave within its boundaries. So if I send in an EM wave through a hollow waveguide, it will propagate within the waveguide and down the other end. This is how all the coaxial cables you plug in your modem or cable box deliver their signals. (Well its actually a bit more complicated because it carries electrical signals and requires a return path)

If you close both ends of the waveguide the wave will propagate down the waveguide and reflect off of the walls back and forth. Now their waveguide is tapered, meaning one end is larger than the other sort of like a cone with the tip cut off. A wave traveling down a waveguide is confined to integer values of frequency, like 1GHz, 2GHz, but not anything in between and this is determined by the physical dimensions of the waveguide. This also determines something called the group velocity. An EM wave carries energy, this energy is delivered at the group velocity which is always less than c, the speed of light in a vacuum. Now since one end is larger than the other, the group velocity at one end is faster than the other. When the wave reflects off the wall it applies a force, even though the wave has no mass it carries energy so there is a change in momentum from before it hits the wall to after it reflects, this is known as radiation pressure. You can also think of the wave quantum mechanically as individual photons, particles with no mass, which collide with the wall at the frequency of the wave. Since the group velocity is different on the two ends, the forces are also different, a higher velocity means greater force even with EM waves. So the difference in force on the two ends results in the thrust.

Now there is some discussion on the conservation of momentum in this system and argument over how exactly it happens. The author provides a relativistic explanation, which I don't quite exactly have a grasp on yet myself so I can't exactly simplify it. But what is important is that both teams are pretty adamant that conservation is not violated, so I don't think this is a redefining moment like some people are suggesting. I think it is more an issue of we quite don't understand how conservation is happening yet, there are some ideas but it will no doubt require more thought and discussion.

__________________________



NEMENCINE: Let me interject here with a clip about Quantum Slipstream Drive:






___________________________


Here is a EVEN more detailed explanation from commentator "skarzog":

I read the English team's explanation of the effect because they use simple Classical Electromagnetism to describe it. I work with microwave transmission lines so I was more comfortable with this description.

To make it easier just think of a long hollow cylindrical waveguide. Solving the Helmholtz equation for this cylinder would show only integer values of wavelength are permitted to propagate in the TE mode, thus only certain values of group velocity, which is the speed at which the energy of the wave is delivered. This is determined by the physical geometry of the cylinder itself. Closing both ends of the cylinder is much like shorting the ends of a transmission line in circuits. The series inductance and shunt capacitance of the wave-guide creates a resonant cavity due to the short, the cavity is driven resonantly to increase the Q factor (quality factor).

However, their cavity is tapered, meaning the diameter decreases linearly along the length of the cavity. As a result the allowed wavenumber of the TE mode also changes along the length of the cavity, along with the group velocity. The the radiation pressure produced by the reflection of the wave at the end of the cavity results in a small force on the walls, however, the force is not equal on both sides due to the difference in group velocity resulting in a net force in one direction. It should be noted this is not perpetual, there are losses into the sidewalls of the conductor which I imagine depend on the angle of the taper, there are losses into the conductor, and the dielectric of the medium if there is any. Because of the taper the problem becomes more complicated, again the group velocity varies along the length of the cavity, making the problem non-linear. I imagine they might have had to use some numerical techniques in lieu of a analytic solution to solve this problem. There is also an optimization issue. Maximizing the thrust would require one side to be large and the other small enough to approach the cut off frequency, however, increasing taper angle would result in a larger portion of the wave being incident on the sidewalls resulting in further loss. This is probably where people are arguing there are small errors in their calculation, which would be an issue when trying to describe such a small phenomenon at these scales.

So at this level to me everything seems to make sense and it seems like it should work. However, when I think about the system as a whole, for example this "drive" inside a space ship I don't see how momentum is conserved. But again, I'm just "arm-chair physicsing" this so I can't hope to understand the intricacies of this concept from reading a few articles and papers over an hour.

There is obviously skepticism, which is warranted. People have to understand from a Physicist's perspective conservation of momentum is not just a law, it is to an extent a foundation of all of Physics. With that said I do not believe this is a Physics defying moment, there is probably an explanation which fits squarely within the framework of modern Physics. I think the debate right now is over their explanation of conservation, their techniques for solving the problem, and experimental techniques to measure it and not whether it defies Physics or not; that seems sensationalist to me.

___________


regards,

Nemencine

Post: #15

Gives new possibilities for the meaning of the term "Beta Orbiter"

Post: #16

The question is, who among our younger membership will write the first travel guide for the red planet?

Post: #17

(08-10-2014 10:25 AM)Brian Boru Wrote:  The question is, who among our younger membership will write the first travel guide for the red planet?

Bang Uranus

Post: #18

Some of the questions about the Quantum Drive is addressed here in a very layman's manner. Very accessible and easy to understand. Take a gander:

Quote:.....Many were understandably sceptical, others were unsure how it would advance space travel....The actual paper reveals details of tests in early 2014 as well as those in summer 2013 -- and the results are even more astounding.

Here we answer many of your questions, quibbles and criticisms.

1. Isn't such a tiny force likely to be experimental error?

The equipment can measure forces of less than ten micronewtons, and the thrust was several times that high.

The test rig is carefully designed to remove any possible sources of error. Even the lapping of waves in the Gulf of Mexico 25 miles away every three to four seconds would have showed up on the sensors, so the apparatus was floated pneumatically to avoid any influence. The apparatus is completely sealed, with power and signals going through liquid metal contacts to prevent any force being transmitted through cables.

Similar consideration was given to any other possible factors that could influence the result, for example shielding everything from electromagnetic effects. There may be a gap somewhere, but the Nasa experimenters appear to have been scrupulous.

2. Thrust was also measured from the 'Null Drive', doesn't that mean the experiment failed?

Lots of commenters jumped on this, assuming incorrectly that this was a control test and that thrust was measured when there was no drive.

In fact, the 'Null Drive' was a modified version of the Cannae Drive, a flying-saucer-shaped device with slots engraved in one face only. The underlying theory is that the slots create a force imbalance in resonating microwaves; the 'Null Drive' was unslotted, but still produced thrust when filled with microwaves. This may challenge the theory -- it is probably no coincidence that Cannae inventor Guido Fetta is patenting a new version which works differently -- but not the results.

The true 'null test' was when a load was used with no resonant cavity, and as expected this produced no thrust:

"Finally, a 50 ohm RF resistive load was used in place of the test article to verify no significant systemic effects that would cause apparent or real torsion pendulum displacements. The RF load was energised twice at an amplifier output power of approximately 28 watts and no significant pendulum arm displacements were observed."

Equally significantly, reversing the orientation of the drive reversed the thrust.

3. They didn't do it in a vacuum, so how do we know the result is valid in space?

While the original abstract says that tests were run "within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure", the full report describes tests in which turbo vacuum pumps were used to evacuate the test chamber to a pressure of five millionths of a Torr, or about a hundred-millionth of normal atmospheric pressure.

4. Why didn't they test Shawyer's EmDrive design as well as the Cannae drive?

It turns out that in January this year they did test the EmDrive design.

The test results for this were also positive, and in fact their tapered-cavity drive, derived from the Chinese drive which is in turn based on Shawyer's EmDrive, produced 91 micronewtons of thrust for 17 watts of power, compared to the 40 micronewtons of thrust from 28 watts for the Cannae drive.

5. Even if it works, how can such a small thrust push a spacecraft?

The thrust was low because this is a very low-powered apparatus. The Chinese have demonstrated a system using kilowatts rather than watts of power that produces a push of 720 millinewtons. This is enough to lift a couple of ounces, making it competitive with modern space drives. The difference is that this drive doesn't require any propellant, which usually takes up a lot of launch weight and places a limit on how long other drives can operate for.

The Nasa paper says "the expected thrust to power for initial flight applications is expected to be in the 0.4 newton per kilowatt electric (N/kWe) range, which is about seven times higher than the current state of the art Hall thruster in use on orbit today."

6. How does this get us to Mars?

The small but steady push of the EmDrive is a winner for space missions, gradually accelerating spacecraft to high speed.

The Nasa paper projects a 'conservative' manned mission to Mars from Earth orbit, with a 90-ton spacecraft driven by the new technology. Using a 2-megawatt nuclear power source, it can develop 800 newtons (180 pounds) of thrust. The entire mission would take eight months, including a 70-day stay on Mars.

This compares with Nasa's plans using conventional technology which takes six months just to get there, and requires several hundred tons to be put into Earth's orbit to start with. You also have to stay there for at least 18 months while you wait for the planets to align again for the journey back. The new drive provides enough thrust to overcome the gravitational attraction of the Sun at these distances, which makes manoeuvring much easier.

A less conservative projection has an advanced drive developing ten times as much thrust for the same power -- this cuts the transit time to Mars to 28 days, and can generally fly around the solar system at will, a true Nasa dream machine.

7. What's this about hoverboards and flying cars?

A superconducting version of the EmDrive, would, in principle, generate thousands of times more thrust. And because it does not require energy just to hold things up (just as a chair does not require power to keep you off the ground), in theory you could have a hoverboard which does not require energy to float in the air.

You'll have to provide the lateral thrust yourself though, or expend energy pushing the thing along by other means --- and in any case, superconducting electronics are rather bulky and expensive, so the super-EmDrive is likely to be a few years away.


8. Surely a single result by one lab is likely to be an error?


The Nasa work builds on previous results by Roger Shawyer in Britain and Prof Yang Juan at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an as well as Guido Fetta's work at Cannae. This is more of a confirmation.


9. Why isn't there a simple explanation of how it's supposed to work without violating the laws of physics?


Different research groups all seem to have their own theories -- Shawyer's is based on relativity, the Chinese one is based on Maxwell's Law and Nasa is now talking about pushing against "quantum vacuum virtual particles" and saying that this is "similar to the way a naval submarine interacts with the water which surrounds it." The Nasa report deliberately avoids any theoretical discussion on this point, with good reason.

None of these explanations has gone unchallenged by theoreticians, and it might be fair to say that there is no accepted explanation as to how a close system of resonating microwaves can produce a thrust. There is no accepted theoretical explanation of how high-temperature superconductors work either, but because the effect has been replicated so many times, nobody doubts that it happens.

If the new drive results continue to be replicated, then theory may have to catch up.

10. What happens next?

The next stage will be more tests and more validation. An improved version of the tapered drive based on the EmDrive has been designed, and this will be built and sent out to other facilities so they can confirm the initials results.

The current plan is for IV&V (Independent Verification and Validation) tests at the Glenn Research Center using their low thrust torsion pendulum, similar to the one used, followed by another one at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) using their low thrust torsion pendulum. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory may also test the device using a different type of apparatus known as a Cavendish Balance.

After that, the sky's the limit. Or perhaps it isn't.

Post: #19

Didn't read the replies, but I don't really trust science journalism on an issue that isn't written by someone with at least some expertise in the area.

Post: #20

^^^
Why are you stating the obvious?

RVF is not a science forum, it is a game forum-- this is not the comment section of phys.org.. Hence, the common sense way to discuss technical, abstract subjects on RVF is to find a very layman's explanation of what is going and post it. And if you cannot do that, then take the pains to write a layman's explanation all by yourself and post it. e.g. what i did here with "Cure for Hepatitis C: sofosbuvir"

That means, to anybody reading it, if the topic posted pique their interest(positively or negatively), they can simply go and find the actual technical publication for themselves and read it.

Here, in just under a minute, i found the actual experimental publications:

http://wulixb.iphy.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abs...295.shtml# . Net thrust measurement of propellantless microwave thruster

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.n...023492.pdf . A brief synopsis discussing the NASA experiment.


LOOKING FOR A POTENTIAL EXPLANATION OF THE QUANTUM DRIVE THAT EMPLOYS HARDCORE PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS?


Below is an attempt to explain the Quantum Drive using all the jazz of higher maths. One physicist tried to use scalar tensor theories of gravity, the other physicist attack the issue from the angle of electromagnetism.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5690.pdf . Scalar-tensor theories and asymmetric resonant cavities . This is a physicist, F. O. Minotti, attempt to explain these results using scalar-tensors theories of gravity


http://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.1031v1.pdf . A magneto-electric quantum wheel. Here, physicists Alexander Feigel tried explaning it using electro-magnetism.


Majority of the RVF crowd are not interested in any bloody scalar tensors theories of gravity, or the fucking momentum of electro-magnetic zero-point fluctuations. They just want an easy, very accessible discussion/potential explanation of what is going on. That is it. The more technically inclined RVF members could, by themselves, then find the actual papers and go nuts on it just like i did.


regards,

Nemencine

Post: #21

http://www.ufohowto.com/index2.htm

Has anyone ever looked at these? Seems like there might be something in there that would be of use. I'm probably going to order one of the books, just cause I like to look through cutaways while taking a dump.

Post: #22

https://www.yahoo.com/news/paper-nasa-gr...02200.html

Quote:The dream of the EmDrive, a futuristic space propulsion engine capable of getting us to Mars in a matter of weeks, may sound like science-fiction — but it’s just taken one big leap toward being science-fact.

That’s because a paper describing how it can achieve thrust has reportedly passed the peer review process and is all set to be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power.

Written by scientists at the NASA Eagleworks Laboratories, the paper’s successful passing of rigorous academic scrutiny was confirmed by independent scientist Dr. José Rodal on NASA’s Spaceflight forum — only for the comment to be quickly deleted.

The paper is entitled “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum.” It’s exciting because it suggests that EmDrive technology is getting closer than ever. Engineer Paul March of NASA’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories confirmed that a paper on EmDrive was going ahead earlier this year, but he didn’t sound too much hopeful when he noted that “peer reviews are glacially slow.”

Related: Here’s the 411 on the EmDrive, the ‘physics-defying’ thruster even NASA is puzzled over

For those unfamiliar with it, the propellantless propulsion system EmDrive was first designed by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer back in 2001 — offering a way to make aircraft lighter, faster, and (possibly) cheaper since they won’t have to carry fuel. The reason for skepticism in some quarters has come because it appears to defy Newton’s conservation of momentum law, stating that an object won’t move unless some outside force is applied.

That skepticism has made even respected publications like New Scientist question how much space they should be dedicating to a concept which seems to defy much of what we know about the way the physical world works.

Hopefully, the publishing of a peer-reviewed article on EmDrive will answer a few more of those questions.

Post: #23

Nice topic.
We pump electromagnetic waves (momentum is given by p=h/lambda=h'k) into a resonator and by the asymmetric design of the resonator the reflection and losses are not the same at both ends of it? --> k of the wave changes with resonator diameter (I looked up the equations for propagation in waveguides)
So we have a higher p=h'k at the bigger side of the tube?
Either I am an amateur or the science journalists have no clue what they are writing.
I hope I can witness the first spacecraft in 20-50 years to utilize this technology

Post: #24

Rocket science?

Post: #25

Why wasn't this front page news instead of the "manspreading epidemic"