propellant-free microwave engine on the horizon?

A British inventor has developed a prototype spacecraft engine which he claims could one day be used to create hover cars and aircraft without wings.

Roger Shawyer's pioneering electromagnetic drive, or "emdrive", uses microwaves to generate thrust and produces no pollutants, New Scientist reported.

The device was initially designed to replace the small thrusters satellites use to stay in orbit, which rely on a heavy fuel supply.

The emdrive would halve satellites' launch weight because it is powered only by microwaves generated from solar energy.

Mr Shawyer has already built a prototype emdrive capable of generating about 16 millinewtons of thrust using 1 kilowatt of electrical power.

He told New Scientist he hoped to see the engine tested in space within two years and estimated it could save the space industry $15 billion over the next decade.

This engine sounds very interesting to me, and also does not deify the law of physics.
Unlike other inventors with miracle machines, Roger Shawyer seems credible and has quite a solid background:

Mr Shawyer was previously a senior aerospace engineer at Matra Marconi Space and worked on the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system. His research is supported by £250,000 of Department of Trade and Industry funding.

If you guys are interested in this article then i advise you to read the sources i have listed at the bottom as they contain more interesting infomation.

Sources

news.uk.msn.com...
www.theengineer.co.uk...
www.newscientist.com...

I hope this guy gets furhter in his research. This would be a wonderful thing to have. Think of the implications for the space program! And possible discoveries from this!

I can see this used in space, but as a wingless airplane or rotor-less helicopter I don't think so.

If the engine quits, what then?
Piloting a hollow rock ain't my idea of flying.

With an airplane, if the engine dies you have some options, like gliding to a safe or reasonable landing area.

Same deal with a helicopter, auto-rotation to a safe landing is easily done most times.

Microwaves from what I know emit radiation, now I'm no expert in micro waves, to power something in space like a satellite is much easier, because gravity does not play a role up there, but I would imagine down here a powerful device to put in motion something, microwaves affects organic tissue from what I know, since it would require a powerful device that would emit powerful microwaves wouldn't that be a hazard to the person who is driving the car? , we are not talking about your regular micro wave oven, but a much more powerful device.



[edit on 11-9-2006 by pepsi78]

Interesting idea, i'm not up to speed on the physics - but if it has practical uses on earth, won't the mega rich oil companies/producing countries try their hardest to scupper the idea. Oil reliance may of been a thing of the past by now if the money was there.

[edit on 12-9-2006 by dipsothedrunk]

Yesterday I was in my local library and found an old issue of popular science (March- 93). On the cover was a craft that was powered by a microwave engine. The craft was supposedly also to be made of ultra-lightweight materials. I was a little amused when the article speculated that "possibly" by 2010 we could be riding one-person single stage vehicles into sub-orbital altitudes to arrive at any destination on earth within a couple hours.

I think I'll head back and do some more research.

Originally posted by pepsi78
Microwaves from what I know emit radiation, now I'm no expert in micro waves, to power something in space like a satellite is much easier, because gravity does not play a role up there, but I would imagine down here a powerful device to put in motion something, microwaves affects organic tissue from what I know, since it would require a powerful device that would emit powerful microwaves wouldn't that be a hazard to the person who is driving the car? , we are not talking about your regular micro wave oven, but a much more powerful device.



[edit on 11-9-2006 by pepsi78]

Microwaves are a form of radiation. Visible light is also another form of Radiation. Microwaves can be shielded with a substance that is opaque to microwaves.

Microwaves can emit a radiaton pressure.

Not going into that math, but is this putting force on the eather or

by what mechanism is this force going to produce acceleration, F = ma.

You could easily design a craft that would shield you and those outside from the main source of the microwaves, and that's the magnetron generators. What you would do is use the hull of the craft as the shielding device, much like the mesh in the glass door of a microwave oven. However, the microwaves would be creating a massive electrical field around the ship using it's hull and generating plasma out of the air around the ship. Especially at the all important boundary layer just above the surface of the hull. What it would essentially do is create a powerful ion wind from a disparity of charge between the upper and lower hull of the craft. That would propel the craft. You may even be able to ride on the Earth's magnetic field by generating an opposing field of different polarity and strength.

All you'd have to do to steer the craft is gimble the magnetron generators so they could point in any direction.

This new technology with so many others that eliminated the need for fossil fuels will soon dissapear back off the horizon never to be seen again. It would be a real kick in the nuts for so many economies.

Useless. It will be never powerfull enough to work in Earth gravitation and the ion engines are much better solution for space aplications and are available already today.

Originally posted by longbow
Useless. It will be never powerfull enough to work in Earth gravitation and the ion engines are much better solution for space aplications and are available already today.

That is a very ignorant comment given that ion engines require something to be ionised and ejected and therefore non sustainable, and the microwave engine does not........all it requires is power - eg solar power...read the articles.

If all goes to plan, Shawyer believes he could see the engine tested in space within two years. He estimates that his thruster could save the space industry $15 billion over the next 10 years.

Source



[edit on 28/9/06 by Strodyn]

The amount of required fuel for ion engines is so small that it doesn't matter at all.

kk ...

HELLO - CAN EVERYONE ON SPACE PROPULSION SYSTEMS PLEASE STOP WORK....longbow says it is useless as they already have ion engines that require so little fuel that any other research/development is clearly pointless.

Originally posted by pepsi78
to power something in space like a satellite is much easier, because gravity does not play a role up there...

Uh, yes it does...

Originally posted by longbow
The amount of required fuel for ion engines is so small that it doesn't matter at all.

While the amount of fuel is rather low, it is still limited to the amount you take with you. Also, it's added mass to the craft, for that fuel, albiet only a little. This form of propulsion wouldn't require the mass of fuel, and the propulsion systems would only be limited by the lifespan of the magnetrons.

Aside from that, what's wrong with exploring new methods of propulsion? Chemical rockets work just fine and dandy. Using your logic that since we already have a feasible method of spaceborn propulsion, the time, money, and effort on research for ion engines should never have been wasted either...

Originally posted by Desert Dawg
I can see this used in space, but as a wingless airplane or rotor-less helicopter I don't think so.

If the engine quits, what then?
Piloting a hollow rock ain't my idea of flying.

With an airplane, if the engine dies you have some options, like gliding to a safe or reasonable landing area.

Same deal with a helicopter, auto-rotation to a safe landing is easily done most times.

They could be equiped with some sort of emergency parachute strapped to the human body and deploy after ejection, much like seatbelts in todays automobiles. Of course the falling vehiucle may cause some damge unless we travelled along highwars with a mesh underneath to catch the falling vehicles or the vehicles could have a parachute directly attached to them.

Regardless I believe if we accomplished the feat of "hovercrafts" we could find a solution to falling vehicles.

Falling car parachutes? Works well for folk - why not?

Why it is a bunch of crap:

===========================

en.wikipedia.org...

The EmDrive, also called Relativity Drive, is a proposed spacecraft propulsion system being developed by Roger Shawyer that uses electromagnetic radiation in the microwave region of the spectrum. It has no moving parts and consists essentially of little more than the Magnetron used to generate the microwaves and a specially shaped fully enclosed tapering cavity whose area is greater at one end.

Mr. Shawyer, an aerospace engineer who lives in Havant, near Portsmouth, UK, initially conceived of the drive as a way to eliminate the weight of fuel carried by satellites for maintaining orbit. He anticipates that the "fuel" (electricity) needed to power the magnetron on a satellite using the EmDrive would be collected using conventional photoelectric cells.

No microwaves or anything else are allowed to leave the device. Since nothing leaves the drive for propulsive purposes an EmDrive can be classed as a reactionless drive. Thus the principle by which the EmDrive is supposed to operate violates conservation of momentum. It is known that the physics equations describing microwaves, Maxwell's equations, conserve momentum, and this would seem to cast doubt on the Shawyer's derivation of a thrust effect.

No peer-reviewed publications on the subject have yet been made, and it has received little or no positive reviews from the scientific community mainly because it violates the conservation of momentum. It has been claimed that peer review is forthcoming.[1]

===========================

Just a small excerpt, there's more on wikipedia.

There is an ion propulsion of sorts.

Its called the:

Pulsed plasma drive electromagnetic motor generator
www.delphion.com...

Ions don't shoot out from a magnetic coil but a coil does generate
the spark for the ions or so called plasma, which I call lightning
as Tesla first made in his lab to incredable power.

In any case, the ion current is forced against flat coil giving propulsion
not the mass of ions that are provided acceleration, it would not be as
powerful.

The patented use on a satellite:
Space Systems/Loral, Inc.
Drive circuit for electric propulsion thrustor
www.delphion.com...

Big size it, no, super size it and it might br flying around now
on the ufo triangle crafts.

One more thing:
The Original Tesla flat coil patent
www.delphion.com...

Which is referenced by the others.

So its here and might have been at least since 1945.