Author Topic: EM Drive Developments - related to space flight applications - Thread 5  (Read 1316194 times)

Offline Notsosureofit

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In the final formulation of General Relativity, Einstein noticed a nontrivial connection between Maxwell’s electrodynamics and his theory of gravity.  He saw that by solving Maxwell’s equations in a gravitational field, not only does the electromagnetic field generate gravity, which is certainly believable from the mass-energy relation, but gravity can enhance a background electromagnetic field given the proper conditions.  This duality was one of the key features of physics that led Einstein and his followers to propose that there is a Grand Unified Theory of all the forces.


Nicely stated.  This is the input thinking of (the rather crude model for) the Notsosureofit Hypotheses.

Offline LasJayhawk

Is it possible that the force being generated by the (QV/space time distortion/flooby dust/magic) is not perpendicular to the end plates of the frustrum? Has anyone verified that it isn't off on some vector and we are only measuring a glancing blow?

I would assume that it's perpendicular to the end plates, and I'm often times wrong. :)

Offline TMEubanks

Vax,

Your 10mN at 35W max input power requirements appears to be doable. Going to pulsed op at upto 50mN seems doable. 3kg is heaps of mass budget. All the electronics would be on one cubesat pcb with the frustum mounted and secured to the 1u modules frame. What g and vibration freq rates will the thruster and mounting system need to be designed to handle?

What are the processes to move forward, what are the precursor qualification requirements and what are the time frames as an overview?

Yes of course I need to do the rotary demo rig. That is a unspoken given requirement. Despite others opinion here, the EMDrive does work and this cubesat thruster is really doable.

It is my intention to start commercial sales of EMDrives, so the cubesat project will be done with commercial sales as the objective. It will be a high quality and high fidelity build.

Traveler:

We looked at using a 3U CubeSat as a means of validating the EmDrive physics, but the cost just for the required parts to build it is still well beyond our current means, even considering that the EW Lab could get a semi-free ride into orbit on one of the ISS resupply runs.  (The ISS can and does launch 3U CubeSats from the ISS Japanese lab module.)  Since you are considering selling CubeSats commercially, have you priced out how much a 3U at 3kg, 6U at 6kg and 12U at 12kg CubeSat would cost to have it put into orbit even using secondary payload status on flights of opportunity? 

I'm curious...

Best, Paul March

Paul

A 3U cubesat at 3kg in  LEO would cost maybe $50,000 (not including launch costs) . I would suggest doing a 2 EM drive model, with the drives mounted perpendicular to the long axis and also  opposite to each other, so the drives would act to spin the satellite (it is much easier to detect small spins than small accelerations). The arrangement would be something like

   |
   |
   | <
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |
 >|
   |
   |

Where each | represents 2 cm and < vs > represents the direction of thrust.

HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results. 

Offline SteveD

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Questions for all and any.

For those that ponder that "Virtual Particles" are responsible for reported thrust in prior EM Drive experiments or that "Virtual Particles" are responsible for some percentage of total thrust.

Why does there seem to be so much of a difference between reported thrust levels with experiments conducted in a vacuum vs. in our normal atmosphere?

Don

I would think it has to do with differing refractive index values between air and a vacuum and the interface between copper/air and copper/vacuum.  Just a gut feeling though.

Offline SteveD

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I don't think anyone's going to give up on EM drive critiques and say "well that settles it" without a large number of very well characterized, third party replications, or a build that increases the thrust output for a given input power by three orders of magnitude and powers a solid state flying machine.

So we should ignore the historic data?
Just pretend it didn't happen and doesn't exist?

Of course not. I'm only saying that the critics are not going to go away without an overwhelming amount of incontrovertible evidence. I do not count myself as one of them.

You make a very good point. I think sometimes people forget that the mountain of proof on this device is very, very steep indeed. The critics aren't just going to suddenly roll over & be won over, it's going to take a lot of patience & a mound of good experimental data.

Or a cubesat going from earth to lunar orbit with an EMDrive.   

Offline DavidR NASA

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Well this got interesting again, didn't it!

Offline cej

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For those of you performing or analyzing DIY experiments, there is software from MIT that might help you quantify the chimney effect by using an ordinary video camera instead of Schlieren optics. For best results, the background should be textured and the video should be uncompressed.

One of their papers goes into more detail:
Refraction Wiggles for Measuring Fluid Depth and Velocity from Video

The second link also includes source code (Matlab).

Offline TheTraveller

HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results.

Doable. Would need 2 x 1U form factor EMDrive CubeSat thrusters at each end, with a control/power 1U cube in the middle.

Design I have developed should gen around 2mN thrust per EMDrive CubeSat thruster per 10W of available DC power. Just need to have 2 x I2C bus connectors on the motherboard to control the thrusters and handle the solar cells & power regulation. So not a complex 3U design nor build.

To make things interesting lets say each 0-25mN EMDrive 1U CubeSat thruster costs $25,000.

Phil
« Last Edit: 11/02/2015 05:23 am by TheTraveller »
It Is Time For The EmDrive To Come Out Of The Shadows

Offline SteveD

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HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results.

Doable. Would need 2 x 1U form factor EMDrive CubeSat thrusters at each end, with a control/power 1U cube in the middle.

Design I have developed should gen around 2mN thrust per EMDrive CubeSat thruster per 10W of available DC power. Just need to have 2 x I2C bus connectors on the motherboard to control the thrusters and handle the solar cells & power regulation. So not a complex 3U design nor build.

Phil

I'd feel better if you got the rotary rig up and tested that.  The spreadsheet seems to have right(ish) so far, but  Shawyer seemed to be talking about higher power at lower frequencies in his latest paper.

Offline Star One

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I don't think anyone's going to give up on EM drive critiques and say "well that settles it" without a large number of very well characterized, third party replications, or a build that increases the thrust output for a given input power by three orders of magnitude and powers a solid state flying machine.

So we should ignore the historic data?
Just pretend it didn't happen and doesn't exist?

Of course not. I'm only saying that the critics are not going to go away without an overwhelming amount of incontrovertible evidence. I do not count myself as one of them.

You make a very good point. I think sometimes people forget that the mountain of proof on this device is very, very steep indeed. The critics aren't just going to suddenly roll over & be won over, it's going to take a lot of patience & a mound of good experimental data.

Or a cubesat going from earth to lunar orbit with an EMDrive.

Well you need all the good experimental evidence first to persuade someone to pay for it or hope someone who already is convinced to pay for one. Then you have to get it into space, more costs there.

Offline TheTraveller

HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results.

Doable. Would need 2 x 1U form factor EMDrive CubeSat thrusters at each end, with a control/power 1U cube in the middle.

Design I have developed should gen around 2mN thrust per EMDrive CubeSat thruster per 10W of available DC power. Just need to have 2 x I2C bus connectors on the motherboard to control the thrusters and handle the solar cells & power regulation. So not a complex 3U design nor build.

Phil

I'd feel better if you got the rotary rig up and tested that.  The spreadsheet seems to have right(ish) so far, but  Shawyer seemed to be talking about higher power at lower frequencies in his latest paper.

That is the plan but to use the 1U form factor CubeSat thruster version as there is a commercially ready market for that unit. With the smaller size I plan to reduce the rotary test rig diameter and to be able to test it in a small transparent 1 torr vacuum chamber. As the IU CubeSat thruster is totally self contained (frustum, control and monitoring pcb inside the 1U volume) all that I need to furnish to the thruster is a 24 vdc supply and enough dc amps to get the desired thrust plus a small WiFi USB to I2C control board to allow me to control the thruster from my laptop.

Whole test rig, including the 1 torr vac chamber should be very portable.

I like this approach as I can design the single PCB board with on board, Rf amp, variable freq gen doing frustum resonance tracking, VSWR monitor and control micro to do exactly what is needed. Basically a gen 2, go to market, version of the original S band thruster.
« Last Edit: 11/02/2015 06:42 am by TheTraveller »
It Is Time For The EmDrive To Come Out Of The Shadows

Offline SeeShells

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For those of you performing or analyzing DIY experiments, there is software from MIT that might help you quantify the chimney effect by using an ordinary video camera instead of Schlieren optics. For best results, the background should be textured and the video should be uncompressed.

One of their papers goes into more detail:
Refraction Wiggles for Measuring Fluid Depth and Velocity from Video

The second link also includes source code (Matlab).
I like this idea and it was talked about a month ago. If anyone would be willing I'll setup a camera to take videos of the DUT for post processing.

Shell

added: This could be a useful tool to be able to potentially use in extracting a warping heat pulse, movements on beams and even on the cavity itself. 
« Last Edit: 11/02/2015 08:32 am by SeeShells »

Offline Notsosureofit

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That is the plan but to use the 1U form factor CubeSat thruster version as there is a commercially ready market for that unit. With the smaller size I plan to reduce the rotary test rig diameter and to be able to test it in a small transparent 1 torr vacuum chamber. As the IU CubeSat thruster is totally self contained (frustum, control and monitoring pcb inside the 1U volume) all that I need to furnish to the thruster is a 24 vdc supply and enough dc amps to get the desired thrust plus a small WiFi USB to I2C control board to allow me to control the thruster from my laptop.

Whole test rig, including the 1 torr vac chamber should be very portable.

I like this approach as I can design the single PCB board with on board, Rf amp, variable freq gen doing frustum resonance tracking, VSWR monitor and control micro to do exactly what is needed. Basically a gen 2, go to market, version of the original S band thruster.

Nice!  If you can keep the diameter below 22" or so, you can test in my 1 microtorr chamber.

Offline Star-Drive

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HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results.

Doable. Would need 2 x 1U form factor EMDrive CubeSat thrusters at each end, with a control/power 1U cube in the middle.

Design I have developed should gen around 2mN thrust per EMDrive CubeSat thruster per 10W of available DC power. Just need to have 2 x I2C bus connectors on the motherboard to control the thrusters and handle the solar cells & power regulation. So not a complex 3U design nor build.

Phil

I'd feel better if you got the rotary rig up and tested that.  The spreadsheet seems to have right(ish) so far, but  Shawyer seemed to be talking about higher power at lower frequencies in his latest paper.

That is the plan but to use the 1U form factor CubeSat thruster version as there is a commercially ready market for that unit. With the smaller size I plan to reduce the rotary test rig diameter and to be able to test it in a small transparent 1 torr vacuum chamber. As the IU CubeSat thruster is totally self contained (frustum, control and monitoring pcb inside the 1U volume) all that I need to furnish to the thruster is a 24 vdc supply and enough dc amps to get the desired thrust plus a small WiFi USB to I2C control board to allow me to control the thruster from my laptop.

Whole test rig, including the 1 torr vac chamber should be very portable.

I like this approach as I can design the single PCB board with on board, Rf amp, variable freq gen doing frustum resonance tracking, VSWR monitor and control micro to do exactly what is needed. Basically a gen 2, go to market, version of the original S band thruster.

Phil:

Word of advice.  Do NOT run your test articles at 1.0 torr vacuum levels!  That is at the bottom of the Paschen curve where glow discharges are the easiest to strike.  You either run at full atmospheric pressure, or no higher than 1x10^-3 Torr and preferably at 1x10^-4 Torr or lower pressures.  I've blown one two many expensive RF amps, or shorted out the frustum from glow discharges in same when I didn't observe that rule.

Best, Paul M. 
« Last Edit: 11/03/2015 03:23 am by Star-Drive »
Star-Drive

Offline Notsosureofit

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Second that !!!
« Last Edit: 11/02/2015 01:20 pm by Notsosureofit »

Offline TheTraveller

HOWEVER, to do this in 3 kg and 10 x 10 x 30 cm requires a drive at a (roughly) x10 higher frequency. Do you have any data on such higher frequency drives? I can't see flying this until there is an analogous ground unit with a good indication of anomalous results.

Doable. Would need 2 x 1U form factor EMDrive CubeSat thrusters at each end, with a control/power 1U cube in the middle.

Design I have developed should gen around 2mN thrust per EMDrive CubeSat thruster per 10W of available DC power. Just need to have 2 x I2C bus connectors on the motherboard to control the thrusters and handle the solar cells & power regulation. So not a complex 3U design nor build.

Phil

I'd feel better if you got the rotary rig up and tested that.  The spreadsheet seems to have right(ish) so far, but  Shawyer seemed to be talking about higher power at lower frequencies in his latest paper.

That is the plan but to use the 1U form factor CubeSat thruster version as there is a commercially ready market for that unit. With the smaller size I plan to reduce the rotary test rig diameter and to be able to test it in a small transparent 1 torr vacuum chamber. As the IU CubeSat thruster is totally self contained (frustum, control and monitoring pcb inside the 1U volume) all that I need to furnish to the thruster is a 24 vdc supply and enough dc amps to get the desired thrust plus a small WiFi USB to I2C control board to allow me to control the thruster from my laptop.

Whole test rig, including the 1 torr vac chamber should be very portable.

I like this approach as I can design the single PCB board with on board, Rf amp, variable freq gen doing frustum resonance tracking, VSWR monitor and control micro to do exactly what is needed. Basically a gen 2, go to market, version of the original S band thruster.

Phil:

Word of advice.  Do NOT run your test articles at 1.0 torr vacuum levels!  That is at the bottom of the Pashen curve where glow discharges are the easiest to strike.  You either run at full atmospheric pressure, or no higher than 1x10^-3 Torr and preferably at 1x10^-4 Torr or lower pressures.  I've blown one two many expensive RF amps, or shorted out the frustum from glow discharges in same when I didn't observe that rule.

Best, Paul M.

Paul,

Was aware there is a min spacing issue in designing the pcb with it's onboard 60W Rf amp and support electronics. Thanks for the heads up reference and related spacing equation.

As the thruster will be rated to operate from atmo to full vac, testing at the worst vac will now be part of the test protocol.

If the issue can't be designed around, will need to add an on pcb pressure sensor to disable operation depending on pressure measurement.

Would suspect there are space rated conformal coatings for the pcb that should handle the situation. Will check that out.

Phil
It Is Time For The EmDrive To Come Out Of The Shadows

Offline CW

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(...)
Bingo!  If Dr. White is correct in arguing that 4D+ spacetime IS the quantum vacuum and visa versa, and if gravity is an emergent force generated by the forced hydrodynamic flow of the quantum vacuum, then what these EM-Drives are, is a directional "gravity" flow generator powered by E&M fields.  The trick now is to prove this conjecture, which at a minimum will take the final marriage of Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity Theory (GRT)...
(...)
Best, Paul M.

Proving this conjecture can be done by experiment alone, I think. Just put a working thruster on a testbench in high vacuum and use accelerometers in front and in the back of the thruster. In front, you should then measure a 'suction effect', and in the back, a repulsion effect from an enclosed device in vacuum. QED.
8)
Reality is weirder than fiction

Offline SeeShells

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(...)
Bingo!  If Dr. White is correct in arguing that 4D+ spacetime IS the quantum vacuum and visa versa, and if gravity is an emergent force generated by the forced hydrodynamic flow of the quantum vacuum, then what these EM-Drives are, is a directional "gravity" flow generator powered by E&M fields.  The trick now is to prove this conjecture, which at a minimum will take the final marriage of Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity Theory (GRT)...
(...)
Best, Paul M.

Proving this conjecture can be done by experiment alone, I think. Just put a working thruster on a testbench in high vacuum and use accelerometers in front and in the back of the thruster. In front, you should then measure a 'suction effect', and in the back, a repulsion effect from an enclosed device in vacuum. QED.
8)
I think that was one of the first questions I asked joining here by using smoke, someone even said to use cassette tapes. I like yours.

I wonder if EW followed through using a laser interferometer in a vacuum setting?

Shell

Offline aero

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Yea, Shell, but what about the paper you write explaining your results? Which is easier to explain to a technically oriented audience, a detected acceleration of a few nano-g's, or drifting smoke? I think we have enough drifting smoke on this thread already. JMO  :)

But seriously, can anyone guess what order of magnitude of acceleration might be detected? F=ma, but what would you use for "m?" (In the speculated/estimated test set-up)

For that matter, what would you use for "m" of the drifting smoke?
« Last Edit: 11/02/2015 04:49 pm by aero »
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline CW

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Yea, Shell, but what about the paper you write explaining your results? Which is easier to explain to a technically oriented audience, a detected acceleration of a few nano-g's, or drifting smoke? I think we have enough drifting smoke on this thread already. JMO  :)

But seriously, can anyone guess what order of magnitude of acceleration might be detected? F=ma, but what would you use for "m?" (In the speculated/estimated test set-up)

For that matter, what would you use for "m" of the drifting smoke?

You could do both:

1) Show measured thrust graphs in ?N
2) Show a video that illustrates the 'space shift' by drifting smoke behind and in front of the thruster

Result: Minds blown.
Reality is weirder than fiction

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