Sunday, May 3, 2015

EmAGIC CARPET RIDE



Okay, technically it's not warp drive, but we may have invented impulse engines.

A while back, Roger Shawyer a British aerospace engineer formerly of EADS Astrium and founder of Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd. announced he had produced a microwave resonant cavity that produces thrust apparently in violation of the laws of conventional physics.  The engine he produces is called the Em Drive or RF resonant tapered cavity thruster. Shawyer speculates that a superconducting resonant cavity could produce 30 kN/kW, or 3 tons of thrust per kilowatt of input power. Everybody laughed.

In 2010 a Chinese research team from Northwestern Polytechnical University replicated Shawyer's experiment claiming to have produced 720 mN of thrust (by contrast the shuttle main engines produce 1.8 MN of thrust) with 2500 watts of input power.

Last year NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory or Eagleworks also claimed to have replicated Shawyer's experiment.

Now, NASA claims to have replicated the thrust in a hard vacuum.  So what do you think? A new reactionless drive in violation of the Law of Conservation of Momentum or the next "Cold Fusion"?

IO9

Em Drive SPR

And for you Trekkies out there, don't worry... they're still working on warp drive.

 

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