"A Rocket Engine That Will Make Space Travel Practical?" Topic

"The British designed EM Drive actually works and would dramatically speed up space travel, scientists have confirmed

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…"
From here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Sure, sure. I'd hear about that first on the TMP website…

(ok, I have seen this mentioned, and debunked as most likely faulty test results from multiple sources already)

Obligatory opposing view link:
link

-Will

Oh, I thought it was going to be about NERVA or Orion, which we could have made decades ago, or bi/trimodal VASIMIR, which we could be making today, or very soon. All based on the physics we know works, all capable of movi significant mass much faster than the crappy chemical rockets we use today to creep around.

I'm still rooting for the Dean Drive and the Vrill-Vroooom Motor.:)

Obligatory "this is already being discussed here" post: TMP link

So build one, toss it into orbit and see what happens. Isn't cutting edge research one of the purposes of having a space program?

The Orion is an interesting concept, a ship with a blast chamber at the back into which small nuclear bombs are injected and exploded to create thrust. When I first heard about this idea it made sense, the scientists where sure they could build the chamber so that it would withstand the force of the explosions and provide shielding to the crew. Then I read a book written by the son of one the people who had worked on the project. The Orion was not intended to built in orbit and then use the nuclear propulsion to go to another planet like Mars. The designers were trying to overcome the problem of lifting heavy payloads into orbit and beyond. The Orion was intended to launched from the ground and travel to Mars. Yes, a large (100s of tons) spaceship launching from the ground using a series of nuclear devices fired one after another to create thrust. The people working on it believed it could be built, but other people thought firing a series of nuclear bombs could be a bit dangerous so the ship was never built.

Thanks for the info my friend.

Amicalement
Armand

The info on the Orion is not exactly correct.
There is no explosion chamber; it turned out that a convex ablative "pusher plate" was a better design.
The project was not shut down due to environmental concerns. Heck, we were regularly setting off nukes all over the place as it was, and the "bombs" to power the Orion had only 0.1 kiloton yields each; any environmental impact would have likely been very minor indeed. What killed the project was the Outer Space Treaty. The reason was two-fold; the treaty prohibited any nuclear explosives in space (as the diplomats could only conceive of such things as offensive bombs, not practical propulsion systems), and the fact that to get funding, General Atomics presented the concept to JFK as a 100 ton space battleship with the suggestion that it could be loaded with independent nukes and placed in practically unstrikeable lunar orbit as the ultimate deterrent. According to the development team, this had the opposite effect of what was intended, scaring Kennedy from supporting such a fearsome Doomsday weapon, without ever recognizing the team's real goal; an exploratory vessel that could carry a crew of 40-70 people to Saturn and back!
So the combination of mutually freaked out politicians stopped our first manned interplanetary craft (maybe even interstellar) before it got off the ground.