Thank you so much for this! I asked this Question almost a year ago, and have been wondering about it ever since the microwave version of the EM drive came out years ago.http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/129799/wavelength-and-frustum-shaped-resonant-cavity
Quote from: HMXHMX on 04/27/2015 05:20 amA bit of history might also be enlightening. Paul will have to remind me on the dates, but before he and Sonny established Eagleworks at NASA JSC, the two of us and myself actually set it up as a small R&D company, which I funded for about a year. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up the support required, and after Sonny was awarded his PhD, thankfully JSC found funding and facilities for them to use to keep the dream alive. Meanwhile, I became President and a Trustee of the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org) and we established a fund to support "Exotic Propulsion" which is named (appropriately but uninspiringly*) the "Exotic Propulsion Initiative. It is possible to donate to the fund at our website. SSI is a 501(c)3 non-profit and thus contributions are tax-deductiable. Targeted contributions go almost 100% to the named projects since we have very modest overhead costs (we don't pay salaries to our volunteer staff, for example).SSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. At the moment about the best we can do is to buy equipment and fund the occasional student intern, rather than pay for principal investigator labor, but that could be enough to help out more than one lab, JSC Eagleworks included. So no need to set up another organization to help – we are here and willing to be involved if the need can be articulated.Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...er, discussion...which has been very enjoyable to follow!(*I think I made that word up.)I am sorry I don´t know by name more people there, but I was surprised and happy to see Prof. Freeman Dyson on the board of trustees of an organization funding ME research and possibly if everything goes right, also EM research.(Paul March says both are possibly two sides of the same coin, so it cracks me up ME and EM are mirrored acronyms! )
A bit of history might also be enlightening. Paul will have to remind me on the dates, but before he and Sonny established Eagleworks at NASA JSC, the two of us and myself actually set it up as a small R&D company, which I funded for about a year. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up the support required, and after Sonny was awarded his PhD, thankfully JSC found funding and facilities for them to use to keep the dream alive. Meanwhile, I became President and a Trustee of the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org) and we established a fund to support "Exotic Propulsion" which is named (appropriately but uninspiringly*) the "Exotic Propulsion Initiative. It is possible to donate to the fund at our website. SSI is a 501(c)3 non-profit and thus contributions are tax-deductiable. Targeted contributions go almost 100% to the named projects since we have very modest overhead costs (we don't pay salaries to our volunteer staff, for example).SSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. At the moment about the best we can do is to buy equipment and fund the occasional student intern, rather than pay for principal investigator labor, but that could be enough to help out more than one lab, JSC Eagleworks included. So no need to set up another organization to help – we are here and willing to be involved if the need can be articulated.Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...er, discussion...which has been very enjoyable to follow!(*I think I made that word up.)
....I became President and a Trustee of the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org) and we established a fund to support "Exotic Propulsion" which is named ....SSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. ...
Quote from: HMXHMX on 04/27/2015 05:20 am....I became President and a Trustee of the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org) and we established a fund to support "Exotic Propulsion" which is named ....SSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. ...Mr. Hudson,Thanks so much for that great post. It would be interesting to know whether Prof. Freeman Dyson knows about Prof. Woodward's work (*) on the Mach Effect and/or about Dr. White's work on a mutable and degradable Quantum Vacuum, and if he does, what does Prof. Dyson think about those conjectures. I have tried to find out in the literature and I don't see anything that Dyson has published in this regard.I did see that Dyson wrote that he believed that NASA's big and visible projects, the Shuttle and the Space Station, will in the future "appear as quaint and misguided gargantuan ventures in the wrong direction, the von Hindenbergs and Titanics of the late 20th century" and that manned spaceflight will use new launch technologies that will make chemical rockets seem absurdly inefficient. _______________(*) I cannot assume necessary agreement, since for example, Prof. Freeman Dyson wrote in his paper "Pilgrims, Saints, and Spacemen" that he disagreed with G.K. O'Neill on the economic viability of some of O'Neill's concepts. This although they were great partners, as proven by the fact that O'Neill asked Freeman Dyson to carry on the responsibilities of the Space Studies Institute.
Quote from: aceshigh on 04/27/2015 06:26 pmSSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. At the moment about the best we can do is to buy equipment and fund the occasional student intern, rather than pay for principal investigator labor, but that could be enough to help out more than one lab, JSC Eagleworks included. So no need to set up another organization to help – we are here and willing to be involved if the need can be articulated.Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...er, discussion...which has been very enjoyable to follow!(*I think I made that word up.)I am sorry I don´t know by name more people there, but I was surprised and happy to see Prof. Freeman Dyson on the board of trustees of an organization funding ME research and possibly if everything goes right, also EM research.(Paul March says both are possibly two sides of the same coin, so it cracks me up ME and EM are mirrored acronyms! )
SSI is currently supporting the work of Prof. Woodward, but it has always been our intent to expand the base of researchers as resources permit. At the moment about the best we can do is to buy equipment and fund the occasional student intern, rather than pay for principal investigator labor, but that could be enough to help out more than one lab, JSC Eagleworks included. So no need to set up another organization to help – we are here and willing to be involved if the need can be articulated.Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...er, discussion...which has been very enjoyable to follow!(*I think I made that word up.)
Hello all, as one of the commenters earlier in this thread suggested, I am one of the many Reddit users that has found amazing fascination in this thread. While I have no scientific opinions to add to this conversation, and while 85% of the conversations I've read through here have done well to send me into a swath of migraines and feelings of utter intellectual inferiority, I have one things to say. Thank you. Though I may not understand much of what is being tossed back and forth here, what I do understand, has done so much to increase my excitement and astonishment of the science that is happening. Please, keep this conversation going. I look forward to reading (what I can) and keeping up with what you are doing, hypothesizing, and proofing with all subjects related to this EM drive.
And, sorry if I sound insistent, but the vertical scale variability + apparent inconsistency of stiffness (wrt known parameters) needs really to be addressed and settled one day or another, especially since we see contradictory data when the balance is used in reverse (180° turn of test article that should yield same deflection magnitudes to the left or to the right, assuming same thrusts magnitudes). A central aspect of the pendulum appears to be not properly characterised. Having to rely only on calibration pulses and proportionality is not satisfactory, given the unusual physics involved and the general scepticism, everything must fit. If one were told that a scale had 10cm long arms, but dynamics (oscillation periods) showed it was rather 1m long arms, the fact that this wont change the end result (equal weight on the plates...) is not satisfactory, there would still be a 1 order of magnitude unexplained aspect at the heart the experiment.Thanks for the regular feedbacks and open stance.
....Lets this be warning how could be earthside test deceiving. balance test is at the end of video. Of course none of this would function in zeroG.
(*) And of course, the International Space Station and near-Earth satellites are also under near the same gravitational force as the gravitational force present at the surface of the Earth, the main difference is that the ISS and satellites are in free-falling orbits. Performing an experiment inside the ISS is identical to performing an experiment inside a free falling elevator, near the surface of the Earth, the difference is the practical duration of the experiment.
Quote from: Rodal on 04/28/2015 12:20 pm(*) And of course, the International Space Station and near-Earth satellites are also under near the same gravitational force as the gravitational force present at the surface of the Earth, the main difference is that the ISS and satellites are in free-falling orbits. Performing an experiment inside the ISS is identical to performing an experiment inside a free falling elevator, near the surface of the Earth, the difference is the practical duration of the experiment.An alternative would be to perform the experiment on one of NASA's Reduced Gravity Program aircraft (aka the vomit comet, one of the best nicknames I've come across.) The difficult remains, however, that getting space aboard for an experiment would likely require more confirmation from their existing experiments.
Hi clever people So, we'll have our article on the EM Drive - expertly and patiently built by Dr. Rodal and subedited by my assistant editor Chris Gebhardt - published on Wednesday. ==snip==
From this post, how do we interpret the "RF Dissipated Power" in the central caption of this slide ?biggerIs it the (DC) power input to RF amplifier ? Or the difference of RF power input to frustum minus reflected power back to amplifier ? What is measured exactly ? What is horizontal scale, is the != 0 part 16.5s long like the power-on period of the thrust chart ? Why this particular profile with initial spike and 2 plateaus ? Why don't we see a corresponding 3x magnitude "step" on the thrust chart at half the excitation time ?I'm not sure how to interpret the next one either :biggerIs it to say that when the spectrum is broader the initial slope on thrust chart is steeper ? On most other charts ~10s of power-on is enough to reach a plateau (kind of), why isn't it the case here ? Seems to me this is magnitude of plateau vs spectrum width that would be relevant, not slope, too much noise on top of those transients. For instance, the decay after power-off looks like having a significantly longer time constant with the richer spectrum, is it relevant ?
I have a probably rather naive question:As far as I understand, we are trying to get the microwaves resonate within the copper device, similar to blowing a pipe by more or less accurately finding the resonance frequency with our emitters, which are generating scattered waves. Would we get more refined or different results, if we could MASER's instead?
Please remember that our copper frustum has a baked on silicone PCB anti-oxidation ~0.001" thick coating on its interior surfaces to keep the copper surfaces from oxidizing and thus lowering its Q-factor over time.
What kind of earth-side experiment can be done to very tangibly and visibly demonstrate that the effect exists?