"EM-Drive Works" Topic

They've done a bit more testing, and EM-Drive still seems to work, though no one can really explain how:

link

Good news for possible space travel.

Oh, good! Another one in the eye for the imagination-less clown who runs the old atomic rocket site…

From the article:

Though no official peer-reviewed lab paper has been published yet, and NASA institutes strict press release restrictions on the Eagleworks lab these days,

This says everything you need to know. The people claiming the drive works again claiming the drive works proves nothing. NASA keeps them on a short leash since they have a tendency to publish . Nothing more than a desperate attempt to keep the EM-drive in the news.

Still fairly certain this will all amount to a pile of crap in the end.

-Will

Another one in the eye for the imagination-less clown who runs the old atomic rocket site…

You mean the guy who maintains the best and most accessible publicly available source on space travel technology in existence?

-Will

Here's a link post to the previous news: link

The experiments are very slowly removing measurement error, but we're not quite to the point where we say can truly say it works.

All that said, I'm starting to feel hopeful that this is a real thing, and not just a really cool way to fool test equipment.

"You mean the guy who maintains the best and most accessible publicly available source on space travel technology in existence?"

I see you're maintaining the same, unbiased, open-minded attitude that he does, Will. ;)

I really hope they are on to something. But the burden is on them to actually prove it works.

But suggesting that someone is closed minded because they only include proven science on their site about space travel?

Are zoos closed minded because they don't have space reserved for unicorns?

Meiczyslaw Supporting Member of TMP 03 Nov 2015 7:50 p.m. PST:

The experiments are very slowly removing measurement error, but we're not quite to the point where we say can truly say it works

In fact, I don't think this newest "revelation" adds anything at all to the previous information about the so-called drive. Looks to be pretty much as wminsing summarized above.

I'll wait for the possible forthcoming official paper to see if there's any actual progress. But I somewhat doubt there will be.

This whole thing is very interesting. But am I understanding it correctly? They are pumping electricity into this gizmo and it is producing thrust? So it's not like they are getting something for nothing, it does require a power source, correct? So the mystery (and the skepticism) is that we don't understand how the electricity is being converted to thrust. Have I got that right?

@Scott-

Yes, that is correct.

The biggest advantage would be you could have some sort of low power source, no fuel tanks, and have some kind of super-ion engine (in terms of mass fraction for payload).

This all hinges on HOW MUCH thrust they are actually getting.

Photon-based rockets are at least a possibility, and in theory even a flashlight would generate thrust. The question is if its enough to be useful.

The EM drive purports to do it in such a way that the photons never leave the thrust chamber, and (apparently) generates a net thrust in one direction based on the asymmetry of the thrust chamber.

By our current understanding of physics, this shouldn't work, since there's no 'exhaust' to give momentum to the engine going the other direction.

So the mystery (and the skepticism) is that we don't understand how the electricity is being converted to thrust.

Well, there's more to it than that, though yes we don't understand how it's producing thrust; if it does produce thrust in this fashion it would rewrite our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. It would also be the foundation of a perpetual-motion free energy machine, which would have massive value above and beyond space travel.

I see you're maintaining the same, unbiased, open-minded attitude that he does, Will. ;)

When the 'press release' is the same people claiming the drive works *again* claiming the drive works without publishing to a peer-reviewed source, skepticism is the *only* reasonable response.

And I'm being opened minded; I could be wrong and I'm happy to admit that. If I was really being closed minded I'd already have written this off completely as a political publicity stunt by Eagleworks to get some of funding that is going to the Jet Propulsion Lab diverted to them, that the purported EM-Drive was merely a smokescreen in an inter-office scuffle, and simply ignored this thread. :)

-Will

EM drive sponsored by Volkswagen…………proof is in the testing!

LOL

Wiminsing wrote: " It would also be the foundation of a perpetual-motion free energy machine, which would have massive value above and beyond space travel."

Except it's not free. You still have to put energy into it to get something out. And presumably you have to put in more electrical energy than you are getting back as kinetic energy. So we are not cheating Thermodynamics :) But as Ghostrunner says, if we can power a spacecraft with a photovoltaic or nuclear system and not need to haul along ten times the ship's mass in reaction mass it would be a huge win.

Except it's not free. You still have to put energy into it to get something out. And presumably you have to put in more electrical energy than you are getting back as kinetic energy.

But according to the test numbers that have been shared, you *are* getting back more kinetic energy than the electrical energy you dumped in to begin with. Hence the extremely high level of skepticism. If the device works as advertised, it does indeed mean that Thermodynamics is dead wrong.

-Will

@Macross
If this is proven to be true then I'm sure atomic rockets will give its own detailed entry. until then Atomic rockets is still for science fact ,not science fiction.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that wminsing! That does seem a tad… unbelievable :)

When the 'press release' is the same people claiming the drive works *again* claiming the drive works without publishing to a peer-reviewed source, skepticism is the *only* reasonable response.

At the moment, though, the evidence is on the side of the EmDrive — four* different teams have managed to produce thrust from this design/theory, and no one** has been able to disprove it.

That said, every time somebody runs a test, they think of something else that could be producing a measurement error. The set-ups are getting better, but they're still not perfect.

*That I can list. I want to say there was a fifth, but can't find them.

**No one that the press has bothered to tell us about, anyway. That might not be the same thing as "no one."

NASA is a political organization with a finite budget which is divvied among a vast number of projects, programs and internal departments, each of which must somehow "justify" (or otherwise impress) their funding needs. Also, NASA is understandably very sensitive about public embarrassment, as they are invariably a popular punching bag for all ends of the political spectrum, and a massive multi-direction tug-of-war toy for academics, corporations, unions and "bring home the bacon" politicians.
Add to that the inevitability of turf wars and theory wars between scientists and engineers, who can be just as selfish, deluded, and downright nasty as a group of brides all wanting the same dress at the annual basement sale.
So, what you have is a small group tasked with testing the most radical, bizarre ragged-edge-of-physics concepts, and needing funding to do so, facing against politically minded administrators who want ZERO bad press, not even a hint of it, and also against other engineers and scientists who insist their own projects are inherently more deserving of finding (and more of it) than all the other projects, compounded by senators and congressmen who want whatever any of them build to be built in their own home states and districts (ideally as expensively as possible, at least in terms of money "brought home").
So the first group wants the "crazy out-there" stuff to at least be kept under wraps, the second wants the money spent on the c-o-t things to be spent on them instead, and the last just wants the money to be spent in whatever way makes their own voters happy about them.
Thus, you have an Eagleworks guy having been told "not to say anything" instead saying "I can't talk about how we solved y by doing x and still got result z" In order to hopefully get the third group to pressure the first group to ignore the outburst and steer money to EW, despite whatever things the second group says.
So, yeah, it's politics (played in the clumsy manner all too common among science folk), but that doesn't mean there's not something there worth looking at.

Sigh. At least he does indicate that a peer-reviewed paper is indeed in the works.

On a side note, I do know that the proponents argue that it doesn't actually violate conservation of momentum, due to theories regarding vacuum energy phenomena, which I freely admit are beyond me to explain.

Ethan Siegel still isn't convinced. And is not being very diplomatic about the independent confirmations either.
link

Looks like it'll take a while to get physicists on board even if (some) inventor/engineer types of some repute are already.