Author Topic: EM Drive Developments Thread 1  (Read 1472620 times)

Offline aero

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #540 on: 09/14/2014 06:12 pm »
A general question, but related if it has the right answer. :)

Say that you set up a Casimir force experiment using two parallel plates close together and detected the Casimir force. What would happen to the force if you somehow transmitted a powerful RF energy beam between the plates?

Hint -
a. nothing
b. the force decreases
c. the force increases.
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 06:20 pm by aero »
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Offline JPLeRouzic

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #541 on: 09/14/2014 06:13 pm »
Hi,
@Rodal: For a long time there was social pressure against Shawyer results and people were reluctant to show support. Shawyer was not supported by a big organization, but when DARPA in 2011 gave lots of publicity to Dr White at 100YSS conference, people's stance changed. Because this time, such research was supported by big organisations (as Stormbringer just said in his last post).

Offline Star One

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #542 on: 09/14/2014 06:15 pm »


I have a readily detectable mass effect on my bookshelf at least.

Thread winner! Nice quip John.

As for the "why no cubesat test," so far I don't believe any of the testing of Eagleworks has been of steady-state devices, and when you factor in how much the power circuits would add to the mass, at current force levels you would need a lot of sustained thrust time to see an orbital mechanics effect from ground-based observation.

Thanks for answering this. So it's going to need a lot more development to get to this stage then.

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #543 on: 09/14/2014 06:17 pm »
Hi,
@Rodal: For a long time there was social pressure against Shawyer results and people were reluctant to show support. Shawyer was not supported by a big organization, but when DARPA in 2011 gave lots of publicity to Dr White at 100YSS conference, people's stance changed. Because this time, such research was supported by big organisations (as Stormbringer just said in his last post).
Hi,

@JPLeRouzic:  Do you know whether the (Thrust Force and Specific Force) numbers given by Dr. White in his slide 40 of http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf for Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device are for

A) experimental results for Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device obtained at his NASA Eagleworks Lab?,
or
B) is Dr. White reporting (Thrust Force and Specific Force) numbers obtained elsewhere ?

_____________________________________

This is the text in slide 40 of Dr. White's presentation:

<<
SPR Ltd. Has produced several Microwave test articles. Claim is they produce thrust with just electric power input.

• Shawyer’s theoretical model has been deemed non-viable by scientific community (rightly so)

Thruster assessed against Q-thruster models and analysis suggests this may be a microwave version of a quantum vacuum plasma thruster.

• Tapered shape creates virtual toroid of active volume that can realize net thrust in virtual plasma.
• Microwave Q-thrusters would not be restricted to tapered construction.

16-170 mN Thruster
Specific Force 0.02-0.4N/kW


Prototype 16mN @ 850W,  0.02N/kW
Dynamic Test Article 96mN @ 334W, 0.3N/kW
High fidelity Test Article 170mN @ 450W, 0.4N/kW

Thrust magnitude increased over multiple test devices from 16 to 170mN

If Q-Thruster theory accounts for measured force, then microwave test articles may have ability to reach >10N/kW


Chinese university claims to have duplicated EM Drive tests , but no way for U.S. to evaluate credibility (so we have ignored it)

16-170 mN Thruster
Specific Force 0.02-0.4N/kW

>>
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 06:32 pm by Rodal »

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #544 on: 09/14/2014 06:34 pm »
This is the text for Boeing/DARPA in slide 40 of Dr. White's presentation (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf ):

<<SFE Test Article at JSC

In 2013, Boeing/DARPA sent Eagleworks Lab an SFE test article for testing and evaluation

Evaluation of the test article in and out of a Faraday Shield performed from Feb through June 2013.

• There is a consistent transient thrust at device turn-on and turn-off that is consistent with Qthruster physics
• The magnitude of the thrust scaled approximately with the cube of the input voltage (20-110uN).
• The magnitude of the thrust is dependent on the AC content of the turn-on and turn-off pulse
• Specific force of transient thrust was in the ~1- 20 N/kW range.

~20-110 uN Thrust Pulses
Specific Force ~1-20N/kW
>>

NASA Eagleworks also provided this information in a 2013 Newsletter, which is available in the Internet from this link:  https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/86787010/513081407/name/Eagleworks+Newsletter+2013.pdf

that reads:

<<NASA/Boeing/SFE Campaign: Boeing/DARPA sent Eagleworks Lab an SFE test article for testing and
evaluation. The guest thruster was evaluated in numerous test configurations using varying degrees of
Faraday shielding and vacuum conditions. Observations show that there is a consistent transient thrust
at device turn-on and turn-off that is consistent with Q-thruster physics. The magnitude of the thrust
scaled approximately with the cube of the input voltage (20-110uN). The magnitude of the thrust is
dependent on the AC content of the turn-on and turn-off pulse. Thrust to power of transient thrust was
in the ~1-20 N/kW range

Peak + Current at 20kV: ~331nA
Peak - Current at 20 kV: ~280nA
Average On/Off thrust pulse= 19.9uN
Specific Thrust = 3.25 N/kWe

~110uN Anomalous Turnoff Pulse with same peak input power implies: ~18.0 N/kWe.>>
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 07:00 pm by Rodal »

Offline ThinkerX

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #545 on: 09/14/2014 07:34 pm »
Rodal-

Regarding the tests of the Boeing Device, and how the thrust was much greater than with the  Shawyer device:

You began your posts here with a strong suspicion the Shawyer results, at least were likely the result of thermal artifacts.  Would such a suspicion still be warranted with the much more impressive results for the Boeing device?

Also:  thank you for the links on quantum particles and Dark Matter.  One of the reasons I brought up Dark Matter in the first place was because you were concerned that Doctor White postulated far to great a quantum vacuum density.  I was wondering if the Dark Matter density might be sufficient to resolve this, and maybe better account for the 'arrow of time' issues you were discussing earlier. 

That said:

[humor] possibly these various engineering teams could benefit from having a good English teacher writing, or at least critiquing their papers?  Seems to me a fair part of what we are discussing here might be resolved with clearer writing in the reports. [/humor]


Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #546 on: 09/14/2014 07:47 pm »
Rodal-

Regarding the tests of the Boeing Device, and how the thrust was much greater than with the  Shawyer device:


@ThinkerX

No, you have this backwards.  The reported thrust force for the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device are 800 to 1500 times larger than the reported thrust force numbers for the Boeing/DARPA's device.

It is the reported specific force that is greater for the Boeing/DARPA device than for the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s.

But, although Dr. White tested the Boeing/DARPA device, as I stated it is NOT clear whether Dr. White is reporting numbers measured at NASA Eagleworks for the Shawyer device or numbers that were measured elsewhere at other labs.

Offline aero

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #547 on: 09/14/2014 07:52 pm »

an interesting paper by Dr. White.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf

In particular, I find the Math toward the end of the slide show  interesting.
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Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #548 on: 09/14/2014 07:54 pm »
Rodal-

....

You began your posts here with a strong suspicion the Shawyer results, at least were likely the result of thermal artifacts.  Would such a suspicion still be warranted with the much more impressive results for the Boeing device?

....

@ThinkerX,

I began my posts with an e-mail I sent to Dr. White concerning his latest testing campaign with the Cannae and the Fustrum Cavity drive.  I never mentioned the Shawyer results in that e-mail/post. 

I cannot comment at this point on the reported numbers for Shawyer, I don't even know whether Dr.White performed those tests or he is simply reporting numbers tested elsewhere. 

***I fully admit to have been confused, and I am still confused as to whether Dr. White ever tested Shawyer's drive or whether he just reported in Power Point slides results obtained for Shawyer's drive elsewhere.  At one point in time I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the Fustrum "Tapered Cavity" device tested by Dr. White in his last campaign was another type of Shawyer's  drive.   If somebody could clarify this it would be much appreciated  :)

Concerning the Boeing/DARPA device all I have is that slide (and the similar information in the newsletter) I reported.  I am trying to have people at this forum clarify the numbers I posted, to verify that my reading is correct.  Furthermore I do not have any report on precisely how the Boeing/DARPA device was tested, and I made a point that the measurements of the Boeing/DARPA device show a very short-duration impulse (which Dr.White says is associated with on/off AC) instead of the rectangular pulses of longer duration observed with other devices.
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 09:07 pm by Rodal »

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #549 on: 09/14/2014 07:59 pm »
Rodal-

...One of the reasons I brought up Dark Matter in the first place was because you were concerned that Doctor White postulated far to great a quantum vacuum density. ...

**** I write the following as an explanation  :D .  I fully understand that the subject we are addressing is complicated, a lot of the information is in PowerPoint presentations and not in full papers, so a lot is subject to interpretation - please consider that my interpretation may be wrong !****

No, I was NOT "concerned that Doctor White postulated far too great a quantum vacuum density". On the contrary. Instead I stated that Dr. White used in his mathematical calculations a value for a "local quantum vacuum density" that is several orders of magnitude higher than the zero-point quantum vacuum density.

This was to answer @frobnicat and others in this forum that were criticizing Dr. White's theory on the basis that if the quantum vacuum density is already a zero-point density, obviously one cannot extract any energy from it, because it is already at the zero-point.  @frobnicat's argument is entirely correct (if somebody would be using the zero-point energy -which Dr. White did not do), that's why great physicists like Pauli, Feynman, de Witt and Schwinger abhorred the explanation for the Casimir effect based on "negative energy" and "negative mass".  I completely agree with Schwinger's explanation that the Casimir effect does not involve any "negative energy" or "negative mass".  Schwinger's explanation (based on a retarded charge effect, a van der Waal force) is what is taught at MIT -nothing to do with "negative energy".   

Furthermore, Dr. White didn't "postulate" a value several orders of magnitude higher for the "local quantum vacuum" out of thin air.  On the contrary, Dr. White derived (based on a Mean Free Path argument) this higher value for the local quantum vacuum.

Essentially I was asking people on this forum to read Dr. White's equations, and address Dr. White's theory instead of a toy model that is NOT Dr. White's theory.

And do NOT take what I write here as a sponsorship of Dr. White's theory either.  I am just asking for a fair peer-review of Dr. White's theory. 

If you ask for my personal viewpoint I would still seek for an explanation using more conventional physics, as for example when Schwinger successfully explained the Casimir effect.
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 09:34 pm by Rodal »

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #550 on: 09/14/2014 08:36 pm »
One of the reasons I brought up Dark Matter in the first place was because you were concerned that Doctor White postulated far to great a quantum vacuum density.  I was wondering if the Dark Matter density might be sufficient to resolve this, and maybe better account for the 'arrow of time' issues you were discussing earlier. 

That said:

[humor] possibly these various engineering teams could benefit from having a good English teacher writing, or at least critiquing their papers?  Seems to me a fair part of what we are discussing here might be resolved with clearer writing in the reports. [/humor]

You might be right.  An Astrophysicist I know also brought Dark Matter as a possible explanation.  However, another issue I brought in the discussion with him (besides the fact that we have not been able to directly detect Dark Matter and find out exactly what kind of weakly interacting massive particle it is, is that the amount of Dark Matter in our location in the Galaxy is very small according to some numerical solutions of gravitational models based on measurements.  The  Astrophysicist retaliated showing that this is hotly debated, and there is an excellent team at Harvard that a) thinks that the amount of Dark Matter is larger (than in the paper that said the amount was small) and b)thinks that we may know soon how much Dark Matter is around the Earth.
_________________________

Also observe that an interpretation of Dr. White's theory is that it involves Dark Energy, instead of Dark Matter, because Dark Energy is related to the cosmological constant in General Relativity, which is the vacuum energy.

Dr. White also has some interesting ideas on gravity, as an emergent force and not a fundamental force (yes I know that there is good criticism of the idea of gravity as an emergent force...).

_________________________

Concerning <<might be resolved with clearer writing >> I fully agree, starting with my own writings  :) .  We try to do our best  :)

Fortunately, in a forum like this, it is "a work in progress" and we can, as a crowd, arrive at a better understanding. :)
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 11:04 pm by Rodal »

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #551 on: 09/14/2014 08:39 pm »

an interesting paper by Dr. White.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf

In particular, I find the Math toward the end of the slide show  interesting.

Thanks @aero for bringing this up. I wish we would address slides 56 to 60 of this paper   :)

**** and I don't mean this as a criticism, the equations of Dr. White are scattered in several Power Point slide presentations, I have NOT been able to find them all contained in a single entire paper
I mean this constructively, the more we address Dr. White's equations, the more fair our assessment and also the better we will understand whether his explanations are plausible or not
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 10:28 pm by Rodal »

Offline bad_astra

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #552 on: 09/14/2014 09:52 pm »
Can we please not try to drum up goatguy on this forum?
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Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #553 on: 09/14/2014 10:11 pm »

Done
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 10:12 pm by Rodal »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #554 on: 09/14/2014 11:20 pm »

I have a readily detectable mass effect on my bookshelf at least.

Thread winner! Nice quip John.

As for the "why no cubesat test," so far I don't believe any of the testing of Eagleworks has been of steady-state devices, and when you factor in how much the power circuits would add to the mass, at current force levels you would need a lot of sustained thrust time to see an orbital mechanics effect from ground-based observation.

Yet, that is exactly what is necessary.  The terrestrial based apparatus seems subject to many more constraints than a free body experiment would be subject to. Don't tell the proponents that I'm suggesting an appropriate scaling up of their apparatus.  They have neither a sense of humor nor perspective.
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 11:27 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #555 on: 09/14/2014 11:34 pm »

I have a readily detectable mass effect on my bookshelf at least.

Thread winner! Nice quip John.

As for the "why no cubesat test," so far I don't believe any of the testing of Eagleworks has been of steady-state devices, and when you factor in how much the power circuits would add to the mass, at current force levels you would need a lot of sustained thrust time to see an orbital mechanics effect from ground-based observation.

Yet, that is exactly what is necessary.  The terrestrial based apparatus seems subject to many more constraints than a free body experiment would be subject to. Don't tell the proponents that I'm suggesting an appropriate scaling up of their apparatus.  They have neither a sense of humor nor perspective.

Given that (see my previous post)

THRUST FORCE: 400 to 4250 times higher for Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device than for Cannae's device
SPECIFIC FORCE  ( Thrust Force / Input Electric Power) : 14 to 286 times higher for Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device than for Cannae's device

1) Would you consider the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device a "scaled-up" version of the Cannae device -last tested at NASA Eagleworks as per the "Anomalous thrust ..." paper-?

or

2) Are the numbers quoted by Dr. White for Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device  unrepresentative because of A) some mistake I made in my interpretation or B) because Dr. White did NOT test  Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device and the numbers he quoted were measured elsewhere?
« Last Edit: 09/14/2014 11:37 pm by Rodal »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #556 on: 09/14/2014 11:38 pm »
Everybody: please take a look at this comparison, and provide some feedback as to why the latest discussion in this forum is concentrating on the performance of the latest round of tested devices, when they appear to have among the lowest measured thrust forces and the lowest specific force ?

Well, I'll tell ya.  The "body" of the work, that I mentioned earlier, is based on an interpretation of Mach, as explained further by Sciama.  With their successive experiments, the experimenters appear to move the mathematical goalposts.  I know that I can't keep up. 

But pragmatically, what happens, is you guys up there talking about all sorts of "effects" and what-have-you, and no reasonably educated infividual can keep up.

Assuming, of course, for purposes of argument, that the term "reasonably educated" only includes that group of people who completely and totally understand, including, without apparent limitations, how to recover the recover the Lamb Shift,  radiation interactions, gravity waves,  Wheeler and Feynman (their theory of the Weak Force), the advanced/retarded wave concept, the cosmological arrow of time, 2nd law of Thermodynamics (which should be sufficient), Weak Force arrow of time, particle radiation, Quantum Mechanics (which is to be expected), the concept of action at a distance, inertia, QM entanglement, prima facie rejection of various premises, time-asymmetry, Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (oops, we already kinda sorta included that), the "Chung-Freese" metric (to which I admit freely and willingly, total ignorance of, even as a collection of letters)... I give up.

My mathematical defeat doesn't prove success to the method, nor guarantee the expected operation  of the experimental apparatus.

Bottom line, and doubling as executive summary; the effect is not explained for or to the edification of the reasonably educated individual.

We give it our best shot.
« Last Edit: 09/15/2014 01:13 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #557 on: 09/14/2014 11:46 pm »
Everybody: please take a look at this comparison, and provide some feedback as to why the latest discussion in this forum is concentrating on the performance of the latest round of tested devices, when they appear to have among the lowest measured thrust forces and the lowest specific force ?

Well, I'll tell ya.  The "body" of the work, that I mentioned earlier, is based on an interpretation of Mach, as explained further by Sciama.  With their successive experiments, the experimenters appear to move the mathematical goalposts.  I know that I can't keep up. 

But pragmatically, what happens, is you guys up there talking about all sorts of "effects" and what-have-you, and no reasonably educated infividual can keep up.

Assuming, of course, for purposes of argument, that the term "reasonably educated" only includes that group of people who completely and totally understand, including, without apparent limitations, how to recover the recover the Lamb Shift,  radiation interactions, gravity waves,  Wheeler and Feynman (their theory of the Weak Force), the advanced/retarded wave concept, the cosmological arrow of time, 2nd law of Thermodynamics (which should be sufficient), Weak Force arrow of time, particle radiation, Quantum Mechanics (which is to be expected), the concept of action at a distance, inertia, QM entanglement, prima facie rejection of various premises, time-asymmetry, Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (oops, we already kinda sorta included that), the "Chung-Freese" metric (to which I admit freely and willingly, total ignorance of, even as a collection of letters)... I give up.

My mathematical defeat doesn't prove success to the method, nor guarantee the expected operation  of the experimental apparatus.

Bottom line, and doubling as executive summary; the effect is not eplained for or to the edification of the reasonably educated individual.

We give it our best shot.

What you discuss up there are interpretations based on controversial theories (even including higher-dimensional Chung-Freese  :) ).  Instead what I ask has nothing to do with interpretations.  What I ask is concerning the experimental results (NO theory).  According to the numbers I quoted, the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device has a thrust orders of magnitude (400 to 4250 times higher) higher than Cannae's.   Is that correct?

Don't get Chung-Freesed here  :) .  Don't escape in a Chung-Freese brane through a 4-D wormhole  :)

Just look at the thrust numbers   Keep your eyes on the numbers.
« Last Edit: 09/15/2014 12:43 am by Rodal »

Offline IslandPlaya

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #558 on: 09/14/2014 11:57 pm »
As someone said before and in agreement on the experimentalist side of things...
Why doesn't someone get a bloody big 100Kw setup of the devices discussed and measure thrust?
We wouldn't need vacuum chambers or any nonsense.
Why not?

Offline Rodal

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Re: EM Drive Developments
« Reply #559 on: 09/15/2014 12:00 am »
As someone said before and in agreement on the experimentalist side of things...
Why doesn't someone get a bloody big 100Kw setup of the devices discussed and measure thrust?
We wouldn't need vacuum chambers or any nonsense.
Why not?

Do we need to go to 100kW to know the following: Does the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device have a thrust orders of magnitude (400 to 4250 times higher) higher than Cannae device -as quoted by Dr. White- yes or not?  Did Dr. White's lab test the Shawyer/SPR Ltd.'s device, yes or not?

Can someone in this forum answer that, please  :)?
« Last Edit: 09/15/2014 12:05 am by Rodal »

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