NASA Accidentally Discovers Warp Drive- PART 2

Started by stromboli, April 30, 2015, 08:58:05 PM

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stromboli

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

QuoteA group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum â€" a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

EM Drive:

Last summer, NASA Eagleworks â€" an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) â€" made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive â€" a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.

The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant.

This lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum if it were able to accelerate.

However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive.

In 2014, Prof. Yang’s papers reported extensive tests involving internal temperature measurements with embedded thermocouples.

It was reported (in SPR Ltd.’s website) that if the Chinese EM Drive were to be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) and work as reported, it could provide the necessary delta-V (change in velocity needed to perform an on-orbit maneuver) to compensate for the Station’s orbital decay and thus eliminate the requirement of re-boosts from visiting vehicles.  Despite these reports, Prof. Yang offered no scientifically-accepted explanation as to how the EM Drive can produce propulsion in space.

Dr. White proposed that the EM Drive’s thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) behaving like propellant ions behave in a MagnetoHydroDynamics drive (a method electrifying propellant and then directing it with magnetic fields to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction) for spacecraft propulsion.

In Dr. White’s model, the propellant ions of the MagnetoHydroDynamics drive are replaced as the fuel source by the virtual particles of the Quantum Vacuum, eliminating the need to carry propellant.

This model was also met with criticism in the scientific community because the Quantum Vacuum cannot be ionized and is understood to be “frame-less” â€" meaning you cannot “push” against it, as required for momentum.

The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.

The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).

However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum â€" the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.

To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.

A community of enthusiasts, engineers, and scientists on several continents joined forces on the NASASpaceflight.com EM Drive forum to thoroughly examine the experiments and discuss theories of operation of the EM Drive.

The quality of forum discussions attracted the attention of EagleWorks team member Paul March at NASA, who has shared testing and background information with the group in order to fill in information gaps and further the dialogue.

This synergy between NASASpaceflight.com contributors and NASA has resulted in several contributions to the body of knowledge about the EM Drive.

The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.

After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China â€" at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions â€" the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry.

Applications:

The applications of such a propulsion drive are multi-fold, ranging from low Earth orbit (LEO) operations, to transit missions to the Moon, Mars, and the outer solar system, to multi-generation spaceships for interstellar travel.

Under these application considerations, the closest-to-home potential use of EM Drive technology would be for LEO space stations â€" such as the International Space Station.

In terms of the Station, propellant-less propulsion could amount to significant savings by drastically reducing fuel resupply missions to the Station and eliminate the need for visiting-vehicle re-boost maneuvers.

The elimination of these currently necessary re-boost maneuvers would potentially reduce stress on the Station’s structure and allow for a pro-longed operational period for the ISS and future LEO space stations.

Likewise, EM drive technology could also be applied to geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites around Earth.

For a typical geostationary communications satellite with a 6kW (kilowatt) solar power capacity, replacing the conventional apogee engine, attitude thrusters, and propellant volume with an EM Drive would result in a reduction of the launch mass from 3 tons to 1.3 tons.

The satellite would be launched into LEO, where its solar arrays and antennas would be deployed. The EM-drive would then propel the satellite in a spiral trajectory up to GEO in 36 days.

Much longer article- well worth a read

No its not warp drive, but a surprising outcome and one that definitely deserves further study. An electromagnetic drive sans any chemical propellant. Its science, bitches!  :super:

Oh and btw, this is an official NASA publication so that definitely does give it some credibility.

AllPurposeAtheist

Meh.. Average lawn tractor engine.. But can it outpreform a Briggs and Stratton 22hp Intek Platinum?
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

stromboli

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on April 30, 2015, 10:53:16 PM
Meh.. Average lawn tractor engine.. But can it outpreform a Briggs and Stratton 22hp Intek Platinum?

We'll try them both in low earth orbit and see how that works.

doorknob

Interesting. It sounds like it could be dangerous though. I just keep thinking microwaves will cook us while we are traveling.
Any one else wanna be a TV dinner?

Desdinova

"How long will we be
Waiting, for your modern messiah
To take away all the hatred
That darkens the light in your eye"
  -Disturbed, Liberate

stromboli

Scale it up, put a radio tracking beacon on it, and send it into deep space. And then hope the Vulcans show up before the Romulans.  :eek:

AllPurposeAtheist

Quote from: stromboli on April 30, 2015, 11:23:32 PM
We'll try them both in low earth orbit and see how that works.
Quote from: stromboli on April 30, 2015, 11:23:32 PM
We'll try them both in low earth orbit and see how that works.
ok.no more lawn fertilizer for our yard..
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

kilodelta

Quote from: stromboli on May 01, 2015, 02:48:23 PM
Scale it up, put a radio tracking beacon on it, and send it into deep space. And then hope the Vulcans show up before the Romulans.  :eek:


They've been fooling everyone for years. Vulcan and Romulans are the same and are both run by a Manputer on Planet Wormulon.
Faith: pretending to know things you don't know

stromboli

Quote from: kilodelta on May 01, 2015, 11:11:00 PM
They've been fooling everyone for years. Vulcan and Romulans are the same and are both run by a Manputer on Planet Wormulon.

Thank you. This is the kind of valuable information I look for on here.