It Still Works :D

TAN

So NASA's "accidental" engine still works after tests. I suppose this is good news.


http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/30/8521691/nasa-seemingly-impossible-space-drive-test-succeeds

lotet

What, seriously!?! That is...amazing.

Muzzoid

This is the article to read. the rest are fluff.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

I'm waiting on results with baited breath on this one. The Chinese version reportably produced 73 grams worth of thrust.

Honestly it's too soon for websites to be claiming victory. We don't even have peer reviewed papers or a theory that actually explains what is happening. And not to mention how little money has been thrown at this in eagle works.

dfacto

So apparently you CAN pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

teaandcigarettes

Well, if this type of space travel ever becomes possible during my lifetime, I'm going to quit everything I'm doing and become a space pirate.

Deathstick

teaandcigarettes wrote: »

Well, if this type of space travel ever becomes possible during my lifetime, I'm going to quit everything I'm doing and become a space pirate.

Avast ye landlubber, give aye t' twelve pounds of astronaut ice cream or aye will scuttle yer ship cutlass at hand.

praetus

Deathstick wrote: »

Avast ye landlubber, give aye t' twelve pounds of astronaut ice cream or aye will scuttle yer ship cutlass at hand.

Dippin' Dots?

Deathstick

aye

Blond

Don't care much about space. want hover boards and hover cars.

Makkon

I don't know about you guys, but I think this is kind of a big deal. Excited to see what happens in the coming years.

dfacto

It's more than a big deal, it's a huge deal! First off it's a MUHFUGGIN SPACE DRIVE (WHAT?!), and then it's also a possible starting point for entirely new physical laws. This is a potential game changer.

Or it'll just be some weird quirk and it won't work.

Muzzoid

If this is real, the ramifications are ridiculous. It would be a discovery on the same level as the magnetism.

It's taking a giant amount of self control to not get excited just yet....

dfacto

Quite frankly while I'm super excited about it I'm pretty sure it will be dismissed. Someone must have noticed this effect before if it was real? Best explanation I've heard about why this is probably a dud is that the force is some magnetic interaction with the pendulum arm they use to suspend the device.

Muzzoid

Well the first reports of it was 15 years ago. So it's not like it was only just discovered.

Nobody paid any attention as it goes against conservation of momentum, and the theories presented by sawyer don't make any sense.

This is the most sober assesment of the situation i've read.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/34cq1b/the_facts_as_we_currently_know_them_about_the/

Dfacto, i think that is the best possible explanation too. But that doesn't explain why when removing the resonant chamber and replacing it with a resistance load the force goes away. Unless the resonant chamber is forming part of an electromagnet, which i doubt.

lotet

yeah, this is all crazy, and if true could change a lot about our future
but like people mentioned before, its scary to allow yourself to get exited, i've always dreamt of seeing something like this in my lifetime.

no pressure EM drive...no pressure >.<

RexM

Not only will this thing supposedly go 1/10th the speed of light, it apparently creates a warp bubble as well. They found that when bouncing lasers around in the chamber, some beams went faster than the speed of light - indicating that this EM Drive could be even more groundbreaking than 2 week trips to Mars.