New Space Engine - EM Drive - Latest Tests show it works...

Flying Abruptly · 22-04-2016 8:43am

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

A possible explanation of how/why it works + how it could be improved + how to reverse the effect.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/

Very interesting. I hope someone will test some of this to see if his theory is correct.

_Tombstone_ · 19-06-2016 1:57am

To Mars in 10 weeks STILL, new peer reviewed theoretical paper shows how it can work and stay within Newton's laws - it has an exhaust and it's light thats coming out of it.

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-paper-claims-that-the-em-drive-doesn-t-defy-newton-s-3rd-law-after-all?0_18396249366924167=

According to the researchers, the exhaust being blasted out is actually light, or more specifically, photons that have become paired up with another out-of-phase photon in order to shoot out of the metal cavity and produce thrust.

So if that's the case, why hasn't anyone detected it before?

The researchers predict that's because photons need to become paired up in order to escape the fuel cavity, so that the two photons in those pairs are out of phase, which means they completely cancel each other out and have no net electromagnetic field. If you think of it like waves of water, if the crest of one wave occurs at the exact same time as the trough of another, they'll cancel each other out and produce a flat patch of water - despite the fact that two waves are still passing through it.

That's what's happening with the photons, so, in other words, the exhaust photons become invisible from an electromagnetic point of view because they're being masked by their out-of-sync partner.

"The EM drive operates by the same principle, for example, as a jet engine, where the high speed exhaust gases backwards (opposite reaction) push the airplane forwards," one of the researchers Arto Annila, told ScienceAlert over email.

"Light at microwave lengths is the fuel that's being fed into the cavity ... and the EM drive exhausts backwards paired photons," he says. "When two photons travel together, but having opposite phases, then the pair has no net electromagnetic field, and hence it will not reflect back from the metal walls, but goes through."

Renegade Mechanic · 19-06-2016 2:06am

.... Ok, I know what's going on here.
What's happening in there is quite simply so unbelievably ridiculous that the universe is actually rejecting it. The force of that rejection is directed out the opening, which is where Newton's laws mercifully take over and reaction to that rejection propels the object...

Capt'n Midnight · 19-06-2016 3:20am

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

According to the researchers, the exhaust being blasted out is actually light, or more specifically, photons that have become paired up with another out-of-phase photon in order to shoot out of the metal cavity and produce thrust.

So if that's the case, why hasn't anyone detected it before?

Radiation pressure has been detected before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure

for 1.3KW/m2 of photons you'd expect 9.08 µPa (µN/m2)

so for each GigaWatt you'd expect maybe a gramme of thrust

It takes a LOT of energy to make photons with the sort of momentum the are taking about.

If they are saying they have figured out a way to send microwaves through metal than they could name their price to the wifi and phone companies not to mention the military. It would solve a lot of cooling problems too. The problem with the latest bit of hand waving is predicts too many effects. Hve they contacted the orbo lads ?

Zubeneschamali · 19-06-2016 3:58pm

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

To Mars in 10 weeks STILL, new peer reviewed theoretical paper shows how it can work and stay within Newton's laws - it has an exhaust and it's light thats coming out of it.

We already understand exactly how a photon rocket would work, and this thing is allegedly far, far more powerful, which is why no-one believes it is real.

karma_ · 31-08-2016 4:25pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

We already understand exactly how a photon rocket would work, and this thing is allegedly far, far more powerful, which is why no-one believes it is real.

Apparently this has just passed peer review.

_Tombstone_ · 31-08-2016 5:25pm

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper-has-finally-passed-peer-review-says-scientist-know-1578716

Shawyer off working on new version with tonnes of thrust rather than grammes, his work papers from work with UK Gov are declassified now, he was getting much more thrust than eagle works are getting.

_Tombstone_ · 06-09-2016 12:11am

EmDrive: Guido Fetta sending his Cannae Drive into space on a satellite to see if it works

Now that the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has confirmed that it has indeed peer-reviewed a paper by Nasa Eagleworks scientists on the controversial space propulsion technology, another inventor wants to go one step further by seeking to test out his device in space.

The latest party in the long-running EmDrive saga is US chemical engineer Guido Fetta. Fetta's story runs parallel to the main EmDrive storyline starring UK scientist/engineer Roger Shawyer, who came up with the concept in 1999. In 2006, Fetta designed a similar version of the propellant-less microwave thruster, known as the "Cannae Drive" or "Q Drive", and he has been promoting it through his company Cannae LLC since 2011.

Fetta has announced that he wants to put his Cannae Drive thruster into a cube satellite and launch it into a low Earth orbit, with an altitude of less than 150 miles. The cubesat will be left in space for at least six months and serve as a real-life demonstration that a propellant-less rocket engine can work and keep a satellite in space.

Shawyer and Fetta's stories diverge down two separate paths, because while Shawyer was busy carrying out research for the UK government – which was classified for 10 years until August 2016 – Fetta had convinced Nasa Eagleworks (the team behind the latest paper) to test out his Cannae Drive.

The researchers reported that they observed positive net thrust in the Cannae Drive in a paper entitled "Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum", which was presented at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in July 2014.

At the same conference, Fetta also presented his own research, entitled "Numerical and Experimental Results for a Novel Propulsion Technology Requiring no On-Board Propellant", which explains his theory.

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 8:03am

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

The cubesat will be left in space for at least six months and serve as a real-life demonstration that a propellant-less rocket engine can work

When it does nothing, do you think the EmDrivers will give up?

I think this probably has another 10 years of experimental error in it.

06-09-2016 1:44pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

When it does nothing, do you think the EmDrivers will give up?

I think this probably has another 10 years of experimental error in it.

Or if it does then people admit that we need to change our held notions.

I can never understand people INSISTING something can not work, when it seems to.

The default should not be it does work, just because, or it can't work, because laws.

The default should always be "this is interesting let's see if it is true or error" no pre experimental bias

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 2:01pm

Deleted User wrote: »

I can never understand people INSISTING something can not work, when it seems to.

It breaks fundamental laws of physics: Newton's laws of motion, conservation of momentum. You might as well say you can fly to the moon by flapping your arms.

And no, it does not seem to work. Tests with large error bars do not completely rule out the effect. This is like standing on a super-sensitive scale which measures to the microgram, jumping up and down flapping your arms, and claiming that the average reading on the scale is a fraction less than your real weight, so it is working.

When someone points out that this is mad, make up gibberish about how your arms are pushing on the quantum vacuum: journalists lap that stuff up.

The inventor came up with the first EmDrive 17 years ago. That's more time than between the Wright Brothers, WWI dogfighting airforces, and Alcock and Brown crossing the Atlantic.

What have we got from EmDrive: Really Soon Now there will be a peer reviewed paper!

06-09-2016 2:55pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

It breaks fundamental laws of physics: Newton's laws of motion, conservation of momentum. You might as well say you can fly to the moon by flapping your arms.

And no, it does not seem to work. Tests with large error bars do not completely rule out the effect. This is like standing on a super-sensitive scale which measures to the microgram, jumping up and down flapping your arms, and claiming that the average reading on the scale is a fraction less than your real weight, so it is working.

When someone points out that this is mad, make up gibberish about how your arms are pushing on the quantum vacuum: journalists lap that stuff up.

The inventor came up with the first EmDrive 17 years ago. That's more time than between the Wright Brothers, WWI dogfighting airforces, and Alcock and Brown crossing the Atlantic.

What have we got from EmDrive: Really Soon Now there will be a peer reviewed paper!

It break physics as we currently understand them BUT, and yes that is a big but, it deserves investigation without pre conceived notions about the results.

I am sceptical of it but that is not enough to discount any potential breakthrough (yes it has massively difficult readings to capture with our restrictions)

So let's lump it into space and see what happens, what I mean is that should be the thought process "Let's see what happens" and not "It's pointless"

It should not work and had we even finer levels of measurement we may have been able to kill the idea completely but, as it stands, it now just needs to be tried to see if we are missing something or not

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 3:49pm

Deleted User wrote: »

It break physics as we currently understand them BUT, and yes that is a big but, it deserves investigation without pre conceived notions about the results.

What this means is that someone should spend money to test it.

This is a complete waste. If the inventor revolutionized physics 17 years ago, why should someone else (NASA, the Government, etc.) be spending money testing his invention?

Why hasn't he strapped four of these to his car, he could be crossing the channel by now? Why is it still impossible to tell if this device actually does anything?

Because, of course, it does nothing except generate a lot of hot air.

Maximus Alexander · 06-09-2016 3:54pm

Surely if it generates a lot of hot air it could be used for effective propulsion.

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 4:08pm

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Surely if it generates a lot of hot air it could be used for effective propulsion.

The funniest bit is that both the Dresden team and the Eagleworks team report that they see thrust in the control configuration. The Dresden team actually saw more thrust in the control configuration.

To spell that out: they planned to disable the Emdrive so that it cannot work, run power through it to generate heat, measure any thrust and call that the control. Then enable the drive, run power through it, measure any thrust, and compare it to the control. The control is intended to prove that the thrust is not just an error caused by the amount of heat this thing pushes around.

If EmDrive worked as advertised, there would be no thrust in the control setup, just heat, and thrust when the microwaves are bouncing around.

Instead both teams found that the Emdrive works when there are no microwaves bouncing around at all, and one team found that it works better when it is turned off!

06-09-2016 4:17pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

The funniest bit is that both the Dresden team and the Eagleworks team report that they see thrust in the control configuration. The Dresden team actually saw more thrust in the control configuration.

To spell that out: they planned to disable the Emdrive so that it cannot work, run power through it to generate heat, measure any thrust and call that the control. Then enable the drive, run power through it, measure any thrust, and compare it to the control. The control is intended to prove that the thrust is not just an error caused by the amount of heat this thing pushes around.

If EmDrive worked as advertised, there would be no thrust in the control setup, just heat, and thrust when the microwaves are bouncing around.

Instead both teams found that the Emdrive works when there are no microwaves bouncing around at all, and one team found that it works better when it is turned off!

Then it'll fail peer review and everyone will be happy.

I've only been dipping in and out but I've not seen any reviewed material.

And in relation to testing costs: have you seen what the US armed forces have paid to test!!!

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 4:24pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Then it'll fail peer review and everyone will be happy

The inventors have been milking this nonsense for years and years - they will not stop just because their inventions are impossible and tests show nothing.

We know this, because the invention was equally impossible in 1999, and tests have never shown anything. But still:

The company was backed by a "Smart Award" grant from the UK Department of Trade and Industry.[4] The DTI grant totalled £250,000, spread out over three years.

Zillah · 06-09-2016 4:24pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

It breaks fundamental laws of physics: Newton's laws of motion, conservation of momentum. You might as well say you can fly to the moon by flapping your arms.

Are you able to contemplate the idea that there may be some mechanism by which it manages to avoid violating conservation of momentum for which we have not yet accounted?

I'm not saying the EM Drive is bone fide - if I had to make a wager the safe bet is experimental error - but your almost aggressively dismissive stance is a little weird. History is full of people arrogantly dismissing new technological proposals because they didn't fit with contemporary understanding. The fact that there are so many institutions, including NASA of all people, looking into this would suggest it cannot be quite so easily dismissed as you would maintain.

Zubeneschamali · 06-09-2016 4:32pm

Zillah wrote: »

Are you able to contemplate the idea that there may be some mechanism by which it manages to avoid violating conservation of momentum for which we have not yet accounted?

Sure - just like flapping your arms and flying to the moon.

Actually no - flapping your arms really can generate lift. Generating enough lift that way to reach escape velocity and get to the Moon would probably be impossible, but only for practical reasons, not theoretical ones.

The EmDrive is absolutely impossible in theory and practice, so it is less likely than flapping your arms to fly to the moon.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-09-2016 10:15pm

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Surely if it generates a lot of hot air it could be used for effective propulsion.

I'm still hoping they find outgassing

A Crookes radiometer radiometer won't work in a complete vacuum because it doesn't use radiation pressure.
In a very good vacuum a similar setup rotates in the opposite direction.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/LightMill/light-mill.html

The effect is also known as thermal creep, since it causes gases to creep along a surface that has a temperature gradient. The net movement of the vane due to the tangential forces around the edges is away from the warmer gas and towards the cooler gas, with the gas passing around the edge in the opposite direction.

...
it is possible to measure radiation pressure using a more refined apparatus. One needs to use a much better vacuum, suspend the vanes from fine fibers and coat the vanes with an inert glass to prevent out-gassing. When this is done, the vanes are deflected the other way as predicted by Maxwell.

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE · 06-12-2016 7:09pm

This passed peer review after, space tests to follow.

It's official: NASA's peer-reviewed EM Drive paper has finally been published
What Is EmDrive, NASA's New Space Engine?
Could Dark Matter Be Powering The EMdrive?

That Einstein fellas gravity theory is next up for a bit of scrutiny -

Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They're Trying to Prove It

In 1905, a 26-year-old Albert Einstein changed physics forever when he outlined his theory of special relativity. This theory outlined the relationship between space and time and is founded on two fundamental assumptions: the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same.

Over the last century, Einstein’s theories of relativity (both special and general) have withstood the trials of experimental verification and been used to explain a number of physical processes, including the origins of our universe. But in the late 1990s, a handful of physicists challenged one of the fundamental assumptions underlying Einstein’s theory of special relativity: Instead of the speed of light being constant, they proposed that light was faster in the early universe than it is now.

This theory of the variable speed of light was—and still is—controversial. But according to a new paper published in November in the physics journal Physical Review D, it could be experimentally tested in the near future. If the experiments validate the theory, it means that the laws of nature weren’t always the same as what we experience today and would require a serious revision of Einstein’s theory of gravity.

“The whole of physics is predicated on the constancy of the speed of light,” Joao Magueijo, a cosmologist at Imperial College London and pioneer of the theory of variable light speed, told Motherboard. “So we had to find ways to change the speed of light without wrecking the whole thing too much.”

Capt'n Midnight · 08-12-2016 2:44am

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE wrote: »

This passed peer review after, space tests to follow.

TBH without a peer review it's just an opinion piece or advert.
Peer review doesn't mean some thing is OK.

If I get time I might compare the alleged thrust from this with ion drive or spluttering to find out the trade off point between the weight of extra solar panels and fuel.

My gut feeling is that it offers no real benefits for most existing space missions even if it worked as advertised

Zubeneschamali · 08-12-2016 1:11pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

My gut feeling is that it offers no real benefits for most existing space missions even if it worked as advertised

If it works as advertised, it is a perpetual motion machine with bonus free infinite energy.

So it is safe to say it does not work as advertised.

Capt'n Midnight · 09-12-2016 10:01pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

If it works as advertised, it is a perpetual motion machine with bonus free infinite energy.

So it is safe to say it does not work as advertised.

That's the point it's not a perpetual motion machine, it needs whopping great amounts of power.

started working it out and got stuck

http://emdrive.com/
At an input power of 2.5kW, their 2.45GHz EmDrive thruster provides 720mN of thrust. Note Wifi channel 9 is 2.452GHz so expect slower speeds. (3,472 kW per Newton , same sort of power as a very large wind turbine )

Solar panels produce 208 W/kg cba finding better figures so 0.2 kW/kg

So the EM drive would need 16,993Kg of solar panels per Newton of thrust.

SMART-1 had 1,190 W available for powering the thruster, giving a nominal thrust of 68 mN,
Which gives 17.617Kg solar panes per Newton

that can't be right ?

ps200306 · 10-12-2016 4:16am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

That's the point it's not a perpetual motion machine, it needs whopping great amounts of power.

started working it out and got stuck

http://emdrive.com/
At an input power of 2.5kW, their 2.45GHz EmDrive thruster provides 720mN of thrust. Note Wifi channel 9 is 2.452GHz so expect slower speeds. (3,472 kW per Newton , same sort of power as a very large wind turbine )

Solar panels produce 208 W/kg cba finding better figures so 0.2 kW/kg

So the EM drive would need 16,993Kg of solar panels per Newton of thrust.

SMART-1 had 1,190 W available for powering the thruster, giving a nominal thrust of 68 mN,
Which gives 17.617Kg solar panes per Newton

that can't be right ?

I would imagine that figure for the EMDrive is supposed to be 2.5kW for 720 μN ... not 720 mN. Otherwise it would 240 times the thrust that NASA claim to have just measured (1.2mN per kW). Apart from that your figures look right.

In the unlikely event the NASA figure was real, it mightn't power spaceships but it would be plenty of thrust for useful station keeping duties in low earth orbit. Four square metres of solar panel could produce about a kilowatt, and 1.2 mN is equal to the drag produced on four square metres by the atmosphere at 210 km orbital height. Keeping a satellite in LEO forever without propellant for station keeping would be fairly revolutionary.

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE · 14-12-2016 5:10am

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE wrote: »

That Einstein fellas gravity theory is next up for a bit of scrutiny -

Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They're Trying to Prove It

First test of this is in and it's Einstein 1/ verlinde 1

http://earthsky.org/space/1st-test-eric-verlinde-gravity-theory-gravitational-lens?

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE · 25-12-2016 2:53am

Unconfirmed reports have china already testing one of these up on Tiangong-2 with hopes to get them into SATs soon.

http://www.sciencealert.com/china-is-claiming-it-s-already-started-testing-an-em-drive-in-space

Capt'n Midnight · 25-12-2016 11:16am

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE wrote: »

Unconfirmed reports have china already testing one of these up on Tiangong-2 with hopes to get them into SATs soon.

http://www.sciencealert.com/china-is-claiming-it-s-already-started-testing-an-em-drive-in-space

It could just be disinformation.

Electric tethers should work in LEO, because magnets.

Capt'n Midnight · 24-05-2018 9:09pm

No surprises, turns out that using a couple of KW of electricity can have magnetic effects. Just like Ørsted discovered back in 1820.

Test rig itself may be causing detected minute bursts of thrust, warn eggheads

The TU Dresden team constructed an EmDrive similar to the NASA test model. They stuck it in a shielded vacuum chamber and bombarded it with microwaves. They were able to measure thrust but it wasn't correlated with the direction the engine was pointing, leading them to conclude the test apparatus itself was affecting the measurements.
...
They found that "magnetic interaction from twisted-pair cables and amplifiers with the Earth’s magnetic field can be a significant error source for EMDrives."

FFVII · 01-04-2021 11:18am

Latest EmDrive tests at Dresden University shows “impossible Engine” does not develop any thrust

https://www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/latest-emdrive-tests-at-dresden-university-shows-impossible-engine-does-not-develop-any-thrust20210321/

New Space Engine - EM Drive - Latest Tests show it works...

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