‘Impossible’ EM drive engine produces thrust from nothing

originally posted by: chrismarco
a reply to: DarkvsLight29

I believe it's powered by microwaves bouncing around...still amazing

True.

That's amazing.

a reply to: fractal5

It doesn't really need to be efficient. In space if you had a baseball perfectly still a slight touch would all you would need to get it moving in that direction forever* because there is no resistance. In fact if there was an object the size of a house and it was still, a slight touchwould move it in that direction

* If it didn't run into something or gravity acted opon it..

originally posted by: ms898
a reply to: fractal5

It doesn't really need to be efficient. In space if you had a baseball perfectly still a slight touch would all you would need to get it moving in that direction forever* because there is no resistance. In fact if there was an object the size of a house and it was still, a slight touchwould move it in that direction

* If it didn't run into something or gravity acted opon it..

I agree, gravity would propel the object in one direction till it hits something, but in our case with an engine we can move in all directions utilising every direction possible and storing energy till it's time to refuel,, hope we see this in our lifetime cause I'm not young also not old.

a reply to: intrptr

Mmmkaay....

a reply to: LightAssassin

Planning to test one in space. Needs rocket assist to get there and the further from the sun, the less sunlight for solar power.

a reply to: gortex

Fuelless sounds great, but evidently it is a power unit for deep space where gravity is almost non-existent and only the ship's mass is important. Certainly, it would not be a stand alone system that could operate from a planet's surface or even near it given the miniscule rate of thrust. And there is the question of up-scaling the concept.

Thrust potential versus mass ratio may not be efficient enough for acceptable transporting of large ships of cargo or human from Earth to Mars even if the motor is powered throughout the flight (accelerating/decelerating). Meaning the motor itself for such a ship, if not very efficient would perhaps be of tremendous size as compared to the rest of the ship.

a reply to: intrptr

I know...

But you posted an article from Popular mechanics so i posted the follow-up....and dammit I'm gonna get excited about this....you guys can be all serious and skeptical but I'm not gonna be.

Bring on a golden age of space travel

Great news, world changing if true.

"The EM Drive is essentially a chamber with a hole at one end with microwaves bouncing around inside.

There is no fuel supplied.

But, when turned on, the drive generates thrust"


"But when turned on". Sure sounds like a couple of contradictions ?
__________________

a reply to: LightAssassin

and dammit I'm gonna get excited about this....you guys can be all serious and skeptical but I'm not gonna be.

Bring on a golden age of space travel

Everyone gets to 'space travel'. We have to die first, then you can be everywhere, all at once. As big as the Universe or small as an atom.

I understand that there are people who are sceptical and I wouldn't want or expect on a website such as this for others to blindly accept and automatically agree with the information in the opening post. However, I do believe this is a potentially exciting development and just wanted to share the information for those who were unaware.

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
I understand that there are people who are sceptical and I wouldn't want or expect on a website such as this for others to blindly accept and automatically agree with the information in the opening post. However, I do believe this is a potentially exciting development and just wanted to share the information for those who were unaware.

And you done just fine

It's still far ahead of our time, unless we see more advanced Gov Tec (disclosure) or MUFON files as credible sources etc, we may already have it but hidden underground in some (black project) base, until then as you know it's all talk and it's fine with me.

a reply to: Plotus

It's not fuel less, and the articles saying that it is are just shoddy reporting!

What it actually is... Is a REACTIONLESS thruster, which is just as big of a deal for space travel etc.

What this means, is you can keep gaining velocity or change directions without shooting something out the butt of your space craft and or doing hellish math and depending heavily upon orbital mechanics to slingshot or brake your spacecraft!

This violates Newton... That's the big deal.

So to recap, REACTIONLESS not FUELLESS!

originally posted by: roguetechie
a reply to: Plotus

It's not fuel less, and the articles saying that it is are just shoddy reporting!

What it actually is... Is a REACTIONLESS thruster, which is just as big of a deal for space travel etc.

What this means, is you can keep gaining velocity or change directions without shooting something out the butt of your space craft and or doing hellish math and depending heavily upon orbital mechanics to slingshot or brake your spacecraft!

This violates Newton... That's the big deal.

So to recap, REACTIONLESS not FUELLESS!

It is reacting, just not in a dimension we can measure or observe yet. We are peaking in the doorway.

a reply to: Plotus

IF it works (and the jury is still out), it wouldn't need a propellant, unlike conventional approaches.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Here is my problem with the experiment.

They are measuring displacement.

Their own data shows that the larger part of the displacement comes from center of gravity shift due to thermal expansion. But I don't see them discussing a possible expansion/contraction and center of gravity shift due to em forces on cavity walls.

So yeah, put that thing into space and see if it accelerates. Until then, I remain very skeptical.

a reply to: moebius

Indeed.

I believe that putting the item in space as fast as possible, on a purely experimental test bed (vessel/object with an inert payload, no scientific gear bar monitoring for the actual engine), to see whether it will move at all, would be the only test that can be performed now, which might put this thing to bed, one way or another.

I would LOVE it to work, but I have some reservations about how the current results have been arrived at.

Anything like the old Billy Preston song ?
"Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothing"


Don't panic, I'll leave this topic for those with the proper ......something, something to 'splain it....to me.
humor guys humor.
I would tend to agree with Newton however, unless all the time Maxwell, Plank and Einstein were busy with 'The Unified Field Theory was just for naught.

Microwaves exciting 'what' ? The apparatus which funnels/focuses them, directionally exciting them, into what ? Dark matter ? Creating thrust is where I say 'what?' and I suppose I'm not alone.

originally posted by: LightAssassin
a reply to: intrptr

I know...

But you posted an article from Popular mechanics so i posted the follow-up....and dammit I'm gonna get excited about this....you guys can be all serious and skeptical but I'm not gonna be.

We've been wrong about the laws of physics before so it can happen, but it doesn't happen so much lately thanks to all the experiments under our belt which have done a lot to test the laws of physics as we understand them. So even the updated article linked in your post still says this:

Most physicists believe these far-out systems cannot work and that their potential benefits, such as getting to Mars in ten weeks, are illusory.

I've got no objection to testing it in space as long as they don't spend a fortune on the test.

One way to cut through all the technical arguments about torque balances and eddy currents is to actually test the drive in space. If it fails, it fails. If it works, then physicists will have some explaining.

If people will admit the failure when it happens, then that would be a worthwhile test. Some people won't want to admit the failure however, and another problem is if we don't understand how the drive actually works it's difficult to optimize the design using theory which is how engineers usually optimize designs.

There's a thread on ATS about an inventor trying to build a perpetual motion machine called an "overbalanced wheel". Physics says that can't work either and the inventor built his wheel and tested it and it failed, but rather than accept the failure, he kept saying "but if I just make one more tweak, maybe it will work", and if he ever accepted the failure I didn't see it. So I think that's a potential trap we need to watch out for. Here's the site that was linked in the ATS thread:

Real Free Energy

In short it is the negative shift in the centre of gravity that was the main problem I have overcome. Like I keep on saying, if you can rotate lever systems in a near balance and tap there leverage forces, then you can get more energy out than the energy put in to drive the system, the energy gain comes from the efficient use of gravity.

That is not over unity that is a free second input from gravity that is bigger than the drive energy input. This does not contradict know physics in general.

Yes it does contradict known physics, he just doesn't understand enough physics to realize it, and no matter how many of his tests fail he keeps trying.

If we take the same approach on a propellantless em drive, we could end up spending a fortune on failed test after failed test. So my only request is, if we test it and it fails, accept the test result. Also propulsion needs to be tested in a direction normal to the solar wind to rule out anomalous thermal effects as seem with the Pioneer anomaly.

If the test succeeds to a degree well above experimental error, then that will be interesting and physicists will have some explaining to do, but so far tests are not above known experimental error by that much, and it's the unknown experimental errors that may be tainting our test results. Doing the test in space should eliminate some of those.