Author Topic: EM Drive Developments - related to space flight applications - Thread 5  (Read 1316370 times)

Offline Vix

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Yep, Horizon episodes should make hard things easy to chew, otherwise someone may get it wrong, like: "they said that some new conical microwave ovens will no longer fry chicks,  it will make them fly!"  ;)
A bit of humor, but on the other hand, I feel disapointed because so many possible new "magical" technologies are still in the domain of "magical" and not real. (Cold fusion, for example). You watch a nice documentary about it and start dreaming, and then you realize that it is slowly but surely being pushed towards "fairy tales" category and will never become real... :(

Offline TheTraveller

Yep, Horizon episodes should make hard things easy to chew, otherwise someone may get it wrong, like: "they said that some new conical microwave ovens will no longer fry chicks,  it will make them fly!"  ;)
A bit of humor, but on the other hand, I feel disapointed because so many possible new "magical" technologies are still in the domain of "magical" and not real. (Cold fusion, for example). You watch a nice documentary about it and start dreaming, and then you realize that it is slowly but surely being pushed towards "fairy tales" category and will never become real... :(

Would suspect with the NASA mention, nothing will air until the new EWs paper and results are released. If the EW results are strongly positive and are included in the Horizon episode, a whole lot of people are going to get a heads up that there is a new way to move things about. I would also suspect we may see some SPR tech we have never seen before.
« Last Edit: 10/19/2015 11:45 am by TheTraveller »
It Is Time For The EmDrive To Come Out Of The Shadows

Offline Prunesquallor

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

There are recognized methods for extracting signal from noise and identifying statistically significant results. None invoke a universal "threshold". They would depend upon the specific test setup and measurement technique.
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Offline Fugudaddy

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

Any force greater than a 'light drive' or 'solar sail' type would be scientifically interesting enough to warrant much greater investigation I would think.

Heck any even minimal and reproducible signal over noise would be enough to ask some serious questions given the lack of understanding about how such a thing could work within the parameters of COE, COM, and relativity.


Offline rfmwguy

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Now that the thread is back on track, I think I want to pose a question I haven't seen asked so far. I think its an important question because of how easy it is to move the goalposts for success after experiments have been run.

What would count as "strong" evidence for an anomalous result from these force measurement experiments, assuming a reasonably well-designed experiment?


Personally I think a test in a clean (no hot soft parts) microtorr environment which shows something like 10-100 mN of thrust (which would be about 1000 times the environmental gas pressure on the faces of the device) would be very interesting and hard to dismiss as a thermal effect. In the air its hard for me to say, but for me I think something in the range of one to ten newtons would be needed to really get me interested (flying off the table levels of force).
Nice post and relevant for sure. My goal, lofty and potentially not doable with my current design, is 100x force increase or about 17 mN from about 177 microN. Ways I'm trying to get there:

1) Force maggie to "lock" to single, stable freq.
2) Re-tune frustum for this freq.

Personally, I would have quit at 177 micros if I felt it was far enough out of the noise, but I am not yet satisfied. While I do think I had positive force, more significant results are what the emdrive community needs. Its getting down to the point where I'm trying to determine the factors that contribute to higher force levels. The good folks in the community are steering me towards resonance and cleaner signal, which makes total sense.

If this 17 mN is achievable, I'm not sure how much more force this home-boy could achieve on a very modest budget and non-exotic materials design, such as superconductors. Got my VNA up and running, Shell is sending me a mag radome to use as a probe (antenna) and we'll see where the frustum Qr was during my first tests.



Offline SeeShells

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Shell, Aero & Crew:

The manufacturing tolerances for building these EMDrive based room-temp copper frustums does not have to be very good to get Q-factor results that are quite usable in obtaining interesting thruster performance.  Our unloaded, (-7dB down from the VNA S11 amplitude reference plane assuming near optimal antenna coupling using a magnetic loop antenna), with no dielectric discs, the TE012 resonance at 2,167 MHz per our 2014 AIAA/JPC paper's copper frustum came out to be ~54,000.  Considering our garage construction crew used a civil war vintage bending mill to form the copper sheet into a cone, which was then lead/tin soldered together with two half inch wide exterior flanges butted together, and pulled together using 0.050" thick by 1/2 inch wide copper hoops that I hand routered out of copper sheets, which were then lead/tin soldered to the cone, should tell you that great precision for your first frustum prototypes is not required.  And since I also just used semi-flat 1/16" thick FR4 printed circuit boards with one side plated with 1.0 oz (34.8 microns thick) copper with the copper side towards the inside of the cavity, super parallel surfaces on the end caps is not required either.   

BTW, since the wave-length of ~2.0 GHz RF is 5.906" (0.1500m), keeping within 1/100th of a wavelength (0.0591") tolerance of your design in your first build as the telescope builders do, one should just use moderate (0.03") shop tolerances for your first prototype builds and go from there.

Best, Paul March
Revisiting this again this morning. My thoughts are if I was dealing in a simple cavity with a single frequency it would scale linearly. The build error of 10 mm could be tolerated but in a very high Q broad Spectrum asymmetrical cavity with additive and subtractive wave actions in the mixing of high Q modes it becomes much more critical.

Maybe I'll take some time for my build and do some maths I've not done in 30 years to look deeper. Or maybe not, I'm very driven to get this build done.

Shell

Offline SeeShells

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It's kind of weird here without WarpTech (Todd), DeltaMass and Dr. Rodal. What I suspect is one thing, but what I do know, is they are greatly missed and God's speed in whatever you all are doing.

Shell

Offline Flyby

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I was thinking the same thing here, Shell...

It shows how much weight they all carry to steer and lead a topic as this one. Sad to say, but you only realize what they mean and how important they are to keep this topic going, once they're "gone". (not for real ofc).

As for speculations...Most of us know there is a white elephant in the room... I'm quite sure we have similar ideas about their disappearance(s)...

Anyway, I'm very glad Paul March pops up from time to time now, to give you DIY builders some guidelines.
Gives some extra food for the brain...and to ponder about...

Offline SeeShells

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I was thinking the same thing here, Shell...

It shows how much weight they all carry to steer and lead a topic as this one. Sad to say, but you only realize what they mean and how important they are to keep this topic going, once they're "gone". (not for real ofc).

As for speculations...Most of us know there is a white elephant in the room... I'm quite sure we have similar ideas about their disappearance(s)...

Anyway, I'm very glad Paul March pops up from time to time now, to give you DIY builders some guidelines.
Gives some extra food for the brain...and to ponder about...
I call it a 800 pound gorilla, I miss wrestling with it sometimes. lol

I'm glad for Paul's clarification as well, very smart man, dang good engineer.

Shell
« Last Edit: 10/19/2015 02:06 pm by SeeShells »

Offline Star One

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BBC would not make a document on just "some" technology.

Compare Horizon episodes from 30 years ago (they're on youtube) to an episode you get today. Today, all you'll get is a lot of inspiring music and a contentless narrative about how 'the world may never be the same again'. The information density in a typical Horizon episode is so low because they need to fill the air time with shots of scientists looking wistfully at the skies.

This will hurt, rather than hinder the efforts to get to the bottom of this issue.

Episodes vary from each as with all shows, some are better than others but to paint them all with the same brush, unless you have an outside agenda, serves no purpose.

Offline Flyby

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

Proving there is a signal, from a scientific point of view, is one step, but an EMdrive will only get "meaning" if it finds a real world application that affects us all in a direct or indirect way. I'm not very qualified to establish what the content would be for a 5 sigma, but i know that 5_sigma is what most scientist will accept for the effect being "true". How do you quantify the odds of 1:3.5mil that the signal you see is not thermal or random noise? Beats me...

So, I'd like to flip and invert the question by wondering what is needed to make a real world application with a "working EMdrive" (on the assumption it does).

I believe the real world application with the least needed thrust force would be satellite/space station positioning. I think it was in topic#3 that there was somebody that took the time and effort to calculate what was needed to counter the orbital decay of a satellite.

To have meaning, that is the minimum expectation for the thrust that the EMdrive should develop...

I'll try to locate that post and add it inhere.

anything higher will only boost the importance of an EMdrive.
with 0.4N/kW, several articles start -rightfully- talking about interplanetary space exploration...
« Last Edit: 10/19/2015 03:15 pm by Flyby »

Offline rfmwguy

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Altho they didn't make it to the final round, we should congratulate our Aachen Germany friends for making it to the hackaday semifinals. Tscheuss guys...

Offline WBY1984

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Episodes vary from each as with all shows, some are better than others but to paint them all with the same brush, unless you have an outside agenda, serves no purpose.

Outside agenda? Please. Everything I mentioned in my previous post is present within every current Horizon episode. It will muddy the waters considerably.

Offline Prunesquallor

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

Proving there is a signal, from a scientific point of view, is one step, but an EMdrive will only get "meaning" if it finds a real world application that affects us all in a direct or indirect way. I'm not very qualified to establish what the content would be for a 5 sigma, but i know that 5_sigma is what most scientist will accept for the effect being "true". How do you quantify the odds of 1:3.5mil that the signal you see is not thermal or random noise? Beats me...

So, I'd like to flip and invert the question by wondering what is needed to make a real world application with a "working EMdrive" (on the assumption it does).

I believe the real world application with the least needed thrust force would be satellite/space station positioning. I think it was in topic#3 that there was somebody that took the time and effort to calculate what was needed to counter the orbital decay of a satellite.

To have meaning, that is the minimum expectation for the thrust that the EMdrive should develop...

I'll try to locate that post and add it inhere.

anything higher will only boost the importance of an EMdrive.
with 0.4N/kW, several articles start -rightfully- talking about interplanetary space exploration...

I suspect none of us can image eventual "real world" application that might come from the drive itself or, more likely, the results of the underlying principles.

I remember reading somewhere that nearly one-third of the US economy can be attributed to technology that directly utilizes the principles of quantum mechanics - probably one of the most esoteric fields to non-physicists.
Retired, yet... not

Offline rfmwguy

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

Proving there is a signal, from a scientific point of view, is one step, but an EMdrive will only get "meaning" if it finds a real world application that affects us all in a direct or indirect way. I'm not very qualified to establish what the content would be for a 5 sigma, but i know that 5_sigma is what most scientist will accept for the effect being "true". How do you quantify the odds of 1:3.5mil that the signal you see is not thermal or random noise? Beats me...

So, I'd like to flip and invert the question by wondering what is needed to make a real world application with a "working EMdrive" (on the assumption it does).

I believe the real world application with the least needed thrust force would be satellite/space station positioning. I think it was in topic#3 that there was somebody that took the time and effort to calculate what was needed to counter the orbital decay of a satellite.

To have meaning, that is the minimum expectation for the thrust that the EMdrive should develop...

I'll try to locate that post and add it inhere.

anything higher will only boost the importance of an EMdrive.
with 0.4N/kW, several articles start -rightfully- talking about interplanetary space exploration...

I suspect none of us can image eventual "real world" application that might come from the drive itself or, more likely, the results of the underlying principles.

I remember reading somewhere that nearly one-third of the US economy can be attributed to technology that directly utilizes the principles of quantum mechanics - probably one of the most esoteric fields to non-physicists.
I believe this is very true, considering the nature of computing in todays economy. An elephant in the room is the scaling, can it provide a platform for earth-bound transport as well as space. Scaled up EMDrive "levitation" is a big possibility for rail transport, not to mention everything else.

If I put an objective hat on, power consumption of heavy lift drives would probably mean commercial transport would be first. However, this could be decades in the future and Space Flight seems the best short term application.

I am hoping last year's rumors of NASA testing this past summer are correct and peer review is underway. Once this opens up, I would envision more labs and even NASA themselves jump-start the small effort to date and its possible a smallsat could be built within a short time frame.

Regardless, times are pretty exciting for a change and we may have more to celebrate than speed and memory in computers which have taken center stage for years.

Offline D_Dom

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I was thinking the same thing here, Shell...

It shows how much weight they all carry to steer and lead a topic as this one. Sad to say, but you only realize what they mean and how important they are to keep this topic going, once they're "gone". (not for real ofc).

As for speculations...Most of us know there is a white elephant in the room... I'm quite sure we have similar ideas about their disappearance(s)...

Anyway, I'm very glad Paul March pops up from time to time now, to give you DIY builders some guidelines.
Gives some extra food for the brain...and to ponder about...
I call it a 800 pound gorilla, I miss wrestling with it sometimes. lol

I'm glad for Paul's clarification as well, very smart man, dang good engineer.

Shell

Agree with all of the above. I have learned to be very careful choosing the wrestle the 800 pound gorilla. I am never allowed to quit when I get tired, I only get to quit when the gorilla gets tired. Still great good fun and all...
Space is not merely a matter of life or death, it is considerably more important than that!

Offline birchoff

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As has been pointed out before, this is a sci-fi-esque energy to momentum drive being discussed. A pretty big signal is going to be needed to get more than niche interest. How "big" of a signal do you think is needed?

Proving there is a signal, from a scientific point of view, is one step, but an EMdrive will only get "meaning" if it finds a real world application that affects us all in a direct or indirect way. I'm not very qualified to establish what the content would be for a 5 sigma, but i know that 5_sigma is what most scientist will accept for the effect being "true". How do you quantify the odds of 1:3.5mil that the signal you see is not thermal or random noise? Beats me...

So, I'd like to flip and invert the question by wondering what is needed to make a real world application with a "working EMdrive" (on the assumption it does).

I believe the real world application with the least needed thrust force would be satellite/space station positioning. I think it was in topic#3 that there was somebody that took the time and effort to calculate what was needed to counter the orbital decay of a satellite.

To have meaning, that is the minimum expectation for the thrust that the EMdrive should develop...

I'll try to locate that post and add it inhere.

anything higher will only boost the importance of an EMdrive.
with 0.4N/kW, several articles start -rightfully- talking about interplanetary space exploration...

I suspect none of us can image eventual "real world" application that might come from the drive itself or, more likely, the results of the underlying principles.

I remember reading somewhere that nearly one-third of the US economy can be attributed to technology that directly utilizes the principles of quantum mechanics - probably one of the most esoteric fields to non-physicists.
I believe this is very true, considering the nature of computing in todays economy. An elephant in the room is the scaling, can it provide a platform for earth-bound transport as well as space. Scaled up EMDrive "levitation" is a big possibility for rail transport, not to mention everything else.

If I put an objective hat on, power consumption of heavy lift drives would probably mean commercial transport would be first. However, this could be decades in the future and Space Flight seems the best short term application.

I am hoping last year's rumors of NASA testing this past summer are correct and peer review is underway. Once this opens up, I would envision more labs and even NASA themselves jump-start the small effort to date and its possible a smallsat could be built within a short time frame.

Regardless, times are pretty exciting for a change and we may have more to celebrate than speed and memory in computers which have taken center stage for years.

Yeah scaling will be very important. But I think there will be a good scaling story if you can get a number of drives to operate in parallel. Even better if max thrust is not overly dependent on volume.

Offline Star One

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Episodes vary from each as with all shows, some are better than others but to paint them all with the same brush, unless you have an outside agenda, serves no purpose.

Outside agenda? Please. Everything I mentioned in my previous post is present within every current Horizon episode. It will muddy the waters considerably.

Again you try & paint a whole series with a broad brush which serves no purpose. Yes Horizon has its good & bad episodes but as I said above so do all shows. For example their recent episode on orbital debris was pretty decent in getting across the issue to the layperson who is the not going to have the specialist knowledge of many on here.

Outside agenda because your posts have seemed more focused on tarnishing the reputation of the show than actually considering the matter of it covering this topic.
« Last Edit: 10/19/2015 06:54 pm by Star One »

Offline Prunesquallor

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...

If I put an objective hat on, power consumption of heavy lift drives would probably mean commercial transport would be first. However, this could be decades in the future and Space Flight seems the best short term application.

I am hoping last year's rumors of NASA testing this past summer are correct and peer review is underway. Once this opens up, I would envision more labs and even NASA themselves jump-start the small effort to date and its possible a smallsat could be built within a short time frame.

Regardless, times are pretty exciting for a change and we may have more to celebrate than speed and memory in computers which have taken center stage for years.

The thing that was driving everyone nuts a couple of threads back was the implication of a rotary EMDrive driving an alternator and producing more power than it consumed.  The CoM and CoE angst seems to have diminished, but not because the conundrum was "solved", it just led to so many paradoxes that everyone threw up their hands and gave up (or used it as evidence the EMDrive was impossible).

That contradiction still exists as far as I can see - the only way out is to assume energy and momentum are exchanged with "non-traditional" sources. :o  If this is true, we would be tapping into a new energy supply.  I think space applications probably pale in comparison with the implication of that.
« Last Edit: 10/19/2015 07:26 pm by Prunesquallor »
Retired, yet... not

Offline SeeShells

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...

If I put an objective hat on, power consumption of heavy lift drives would probably mean commercial transport would be first. However, this could be decades in the future and Space Flight seems the best short term application.

I am hoping last year's rumors of NASA testing this past summer are correct and peer review is underway. Once this opens up, I would envision more labs and even NASA themselves jump-start the small effort to date and its possible a smallsat could be built within a short time frame.

Regardless, times are pretty exciting for a change and we may have more to celebrate than speed and memory in computers which have taken center stage for years.

The thing that was driving everyone nuts a couple of threads back was the implication of a rotary EMDrive driving an alternator and producing more power than it consumed.  The CoM and CoE angst seems to have diminished, but not because the conundrum was "solved", it just led to so many paradoxes that everyone threw up their hands and gave up (or used it as evidence the EMDrive was impossible).

That contradiction still exists as far as I can see - the only way out is to assume energy and momentum are exchanged with "non-traditional" sources. :o  If this is true, we would be tapping into a new energy supply.  I think space applications probably pale in comparison with the implication of that.
I've always said give me a hole to the outside world and I'll make it move. As I don't want to tread on the revered CoE and CoM.

Waiting for my silver solder to be delivered so I can start some final assembly before I model it out with the SMA, (I ran out of my other tube). And it's ok as we cut down this massive tree this weekend, blocked and split it.  I'm kind of moving very slow. I think it's hot tub time anyway.

Shell

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