Star Trek Style Propellantless EM Drive Passes Peer Review

[Paratus]

Due to making this milestone continuing from this thread http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/whoa-new-type-of-space-drive-discovered.2393507/


NASA Eagleworks,who had been testing the controversial propellantless EM Drive, had their latest experimental paper on the drive pass peer review.
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120

https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/21/nasa-demonstrates-em-drive-theory-but-dont-get-too-excited/
They tested the drive in a vacuum in forward and reverse directions on a balance sensitive enough to measure single digit microNewtons.

They tested at 40, 60, and 80 watts and measured thrust ranging from 40-120 microNewtons.

They addressed several sources of error. Error was calculated to be + 6 microNewtons.

The thruster was performing in the range of 1.2mN per kw. This is two orders of magnitude above other propellantless designs like light sails or photon rockets. It's also a bit over one order of magnitude below state of the art Hall Effect ion thrusters.

The drive is an enclosed tapered RF resonance cavity. Microwaves are introduced and they resonate inside the cavity. Somehow this produces a small amount of thrust without propellant. This is not understood. At face value it is violating Newton's third law, conservation of momentum. Yet NASA and several others have all found small amounts of thrust.

There all currently several hypotheses as to how it would function, (including as yet unaccounted for experimental or measurement error). All are somewhat lacking in details.

This is the first time an EM Drive experiment has passed the peer review hurdle.

A thruster of this sort would open the entire solar system for exploration as only a reactor or solar panels would be needed to provide constant thrust.

One of the inventors is attempting to get one launched in a cube sat in the next year. That would be the acid test.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em-drive-cannae-cubesat-reactionless/

It may endup being nothing but not a lot of people thought it would make peer review.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

Will you be joining Team Anandtech for the Folding@Home challenge in December?

 

[brainhulk]

i produce thrust that violates the law

 

[PottedMeat]

i produce thrust that violates the law

does it pass peer review?

 

[cbrunny]

i produce thrust that violates the law

Donald?

 

[Paratus]

i produce thrust that violates the law

I admit. I lol'd

Unfortunately it won't take you very far.
https://youtu.be/iaN0xg2VQSo

 

[Ruptga]

The discussion section of their paper is really interesting. Half of it went well over my head, but the first part about pilot waves didn't and it's really something.

Pilot-wave theories are a family of realist interpretations of quantum mechanics that conjecture that the statistical nature of the formalism of quantum mechanics is due to an ignorance of an underlying more fundamental real dynamics, and that microscopic particles follow real trajectories over time just like larger classical bodies do.
...
Although the idea of a pilot wave or realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is not the dominant view of physics today (which favors the Copenhagen interpretation), it has seen a strong resurgence of interest over the last decade based on some experimental work pioneered by Couder and Fort [13]. Couder and Fort discovered that bouncing a millimeter-sized droplet on a vibrating shallow fluid bath at just the right resonance frequency created a scenario where the bouncing droplet created a wave pattern on the shallow bath that also seemed to guide the droplet along its way. To Couder and Fort, this seemed very similar to the pilot-wave concept just discussed and, in subsequent testing by Couder and others, this macroscopic classical system was able to exhibit characteristics thought to be restricted to the quantum realm. To date, this hydrodynamic pilot-wave analog system has been able to duplicate the double slit experiment findings, tunneling, quantized orbits, and numerous other quantum phenomena. Bush put together two thorough review papers chronicling the experimental work being done in this domain by numerous universities.

Macroscopic stuff acting like quantum stuff is huge. Macroscopic, even.

 

[Paratus]

The discussion section of their paper is really interesting. Half of it went well over my head, but the first part about pilot waves didn't and it's really something.


Macroscopic stuff acting like quantum stuff is huge. Macroscopic, even.

I had heard about the pilot wave theory before in the generic sense but the explanation here is still above me.

Assuming the EM drive continues to not be experimental error a working theory would allow them to increase the efficiency of the thruster.

We went from Goddards first liquid fuel rocket in 1926 with 9lbs of thrust to the Saturn V with 7.5 million pounds of thrust in 40 years.

A similar improvement would take us from single digit mN to kN of force.

Maybe with the peer reviewed paper a bit more budget will become available for design and testing work.

 

[disappoint]

Star Trek Style Propellantless EM Drive Passes Peer Review

How is this Star Trek style? Didn't Star Trek use matter/antimatter annihilation?

Also, how is this different than conventional ion thrusters?

 

[Ruptga]

How is this Star Trek style? Didn't Star Trek use matter/antimatter annihilation?

Also, how is this different than conventional ion thrusters?

In order:
Because it's all future-y and magic-like.

Yes, for power that they use to do things with dilithium crystals and warp nacelles so they can warp space. This isn't a power source though, it's a thruster.

This doesn't consume propellant. Conventional ion thrusters are extremely fuel efficient but they still require both power and fuel, this only requires power.

The big picture is that something with this drive and a long-lasting power source like solar (for the inner solar system) or nuclear (for the outer solar system) could run its engine nonstop, so instead of waiting for near-perfect launch windows we could go more or less wherever, whenever, and just keep the engine on longer to compensate. We could also use a very large version of this to move extremely large things very slowly over time, like an asteroid that we may want to put into an Earth orbit so it can easily be mined. We can't do that right now because we would run out of fuel before we made any real progress on moving it. Conventional rockets will still be used to get to orbit though, this engine doesn't accelerate quickly enough to overcome gravity's downward acceleration and take off from the surface.

 

[TwiceOver]

We could also use a very large version of this to move extremely large things very slowly over time, like an asteroid that we may want to put into an Earth orbit so it can easily be mined.

On the short list of things that sound like really bad ideas.

 

[Ruptga]

On the short list of things that sound like really bad ideas.

Short list? I can think of a ton of bad ideas, especially if we're going to assume that the people involved are incompetent. How does flinging sixty tons of metal and people directly over densely populated areas sound? It happens every day, especially near major airports. And maybe this spring I'll buy another machine so I can hover my practically naked body two feet above a narrow band of concrete at 70mph while surrounded by two-ton chunks of metal that move erratically.

 

[TwiceOver]

Short list? I can think of a ton of bad ideas, especially if we're going to assume that the people involved are incompetent. How does flinging sixty tons of metal and people directly over densely populated areas sound? It happens every day, especially near major airports. And maybe this spring I'll buy another machine so I can hover my practically naked body two feet above a narrow band of concrete at 70mph while surrounded by two-ton chunks of metal that move erratically.

I am thoroughly confused. LOL. I was making a joke about bringing space rocks intentionally into our orbit by people who, while ARE rocket scientists, often enough get things completely wrong. And you commented back with what seems to be complete gibberish.

 

[Ruptga]

I am thoroughly confused. LOL. I was making a joke about bringing space rocks intentionally into our orbit by people who, while ARE rocket scientists, often enough get things completely wrong. And you commented back with what seems to be complete gibberish.

I get it, I was just saying that when someone describes air liners or motorcycles the wrong way they sound completely insane as well, but most of us rarely give them a second thought.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Am I right in thinking that if I strap one of these to a little space ship (200 lbs) that we could reach warp 1 in like 11,000 years? not accounting for gravitational forces...

 

[Paratus]

Am I right in thinking that if I strap one of these to a little space ship (200 lbs) that we could reach warp 1 in like 11,000 years? not accounting for gravitational forces...

Basically for the pre-Alpha version here.

The paper states that they made no effort to optimize thrust nor do they have a working theory on how it works to help optimize it.

So if the thrust is not an experimental or measurement error there would be some hope to increase the thrust per unit of input power in the future once it's understood how it functions.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Basically for the pre-Alpha version here.

The paper states that they made no effort to optimize thrust nor do they have a working theory on how it works to help optimize it.

So if the thrust is not an experimental or measurement error there would be some hope to increase the thrust per unit of input power in the future once it's understood how it functions.

Okay...so warp one in something less than 11,000 years?

 

[scorpmatt]

Okay...so warp one in something less than 11,000 years?

That still gives enough time for the Borg to try and wipe us out.

 

[Ruptga]

Am I right in thinking that if I strap one of these to a little space ship (200 lbs) that we could reach warp 1 in like 11,000 years? not accounting for gravitational forces...

Basically, that's what propellent-less means.

 

[Rifter]

Will this scale? like could you hook this up to a nuclear reactor and pump gigawatts into it and achieve meaningful thrust?

 

[Paratus]

Will this scale? like could you hook this up to a nuclear reactor and pump gigawatts into it and achieve meaningful thrust?

That's the idea, if it's not an experimental error.

 

[Paratus]

So here's a video by the Eagleworks lead Dr. Sonny White. He describes his hypothesis for how it may work. The video was of a live speech at Johnson Space Center and it's pretty long.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/102031174
Starts about 10:30

 

[Ichinisan]

A Mythical Form of Space Propulsion Finally Gets a Real Test

Scientists have debated for decades whether the propulsion concept known as EmDrive is real or wishful thinking. A sensitive new tool may at last provide an answer.

www.wired.com

4 years after this thread started, I'm not optimistic.

Still it would be pretty cool.

[edit]

I think I meant to find longer discussion thread about it.