Author Topic: EM Drive Developments - related to space flight applications - Thread 2  (Read 3314590 times)

Offline Mulletron

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1150
  • Liked: 837
  • Likes Given: 1071
Not using a magnetron. I have test equipment. I can find the resonant frequency if we can calculate geometry close enough. The question is, in your opinion, is the math there to make an exact calculation yet?
« Last Edit: 02/06/2015 08:02 pm by Mulletron »
And I can feel the change in the wind right now - Rod Stewart

Offline Rodal

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5911
  • USA
  • Liked: 6124
  • Likes Given: 5564
Not using a magnetron. I have test equipment. I can find the resonant frequency if we can calculate geometry close enough. The question is, in your opinion, is the math there to make an exact calculation yet?
Definitely yes.   :)

Please wait another week for me to post the numerical results for NASA and Shawyer vs equations.

Offline Mulletron

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1150
  • Liked: 837
  • Likes Given: 1071
Brainstorming some ideas here. So as far as an at home Cavendish, I want something that has the capability of spinning for days/weeks on wireless power (I understand the wireless power may affect the experiment so I'll have to control for it.) without getting wound up. I was thinking spherical magnets at the very top of the fishing line. Any thoughts? Or something better? The reason for this is. I'm using ultra low power, like 100mw low. The Rf source is going to have to ride along. Available electrical power will limit available rf power. Indeed if there is any thrust, it will be much smaller than anyone ever measured before. If it even works at all, it will probably take a long time to become evident on the balance. I want to give the device time to gain speed and keep going before I stop it and flip the "thruster" over. If it gets wound up, it'll just oscillate.

https://www.fourmilab.ch/gravitation/foobar/
http://www.intalek.com/Index/Projects/Research/CavendishExperiment.htm
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/sphere-magnets
http://www.amazon.com/Beautyforall-Wireless-Supply-Module-Charger/dp/B00L19HE5I/ref=sr_1_37?ie=UTF8&qid=1423260545&sr=8-37&keywords=wireless+power
And I can feel the change in the wind right now - Rod Stewart

Offline matthewpapa

  • Member
  • Posts: 9
  • Houston, TX
  • Liked: 15
  • Likes Given: 24
Break:
@ Paul March, thank you for chiming in. All of us are chomping at the bit for ANY news whatsoever. Maybe Eagleworks could leverage its social media presence (https://www.facebook.com/eagleworksnasa) to keep the public engaged. As far as the lack of $$$ and resources go, I understand that Eagleworks works on a shoestring budget. Wish we could help. It probably isn't acceptable for us to try and crowdfund a government agency. Hopefully you achieve results that will turn heads. Godspeed.

I would like to second this sentiment. Updates would be great!
Paul, If you feel crowdfunding would be worth it I am sure you could get lots of donors (including me). But like Mullerton said, may not be possible due to red tape.
And if not that we can call our congressmen and ask them to get this funded (for what its worth)

Offline Mulletron

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1150
  • Liked: 837
  • Likes Given: 1071
And I can feel the change in the wind right now - Rod Stewart

Offline supersubie

  • Member
  • Posts: 68
  • Liked: 82
  • Likes Given: 37
Found a nice little update article on nextbigfuture about the EM drive work. Dunno if you guys have seen this already but it might be of interest to a few of you following along intermittently! Enjoy.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/update-on-emdrive-work-at-nasa.html#more

Offline Jilpeter

  • Member
  • Posts: 2
  • Liked: 0
  • Likes Given: 2
For people more familiar with NASA, is that common?  Does NASA as a civilian agency have a history (or policy?) of suppressing experimental results that, like this, may have military applications?   In other words, can the lack of any news at all one way or the other, be taken as a sign that there might be something to this?  Or is that just conspiratorial nonsense?

Rockets have military applications, but NASA does not suppress experimental results of rockets.  To the contrary, they partner with companies such as SpaceX and share information for the advancement of space exploration.  I'm not convinced there is a black out for EM drive technology.  There appears to be a delay, which could have many causes.  If there are people in the administration advocating for a black out, I think it is a mistake, and probably too late given the amount of information already in the public domain.

To be fair to NASA if this does work it's such a revolutionary technology that the reporting of it is not something to be rushed into. No doubt every result is having to be checked, checked again & then checked again etc etc which no doubt slows down the release of information. Especially if on top of that there are national security implications that have to be considered as well.

Folks:

The Eagleworks Lab is still working on the copper frustum thruster that was reported on last summer at the AIAA/JPC.  We have now confirmed that there is a thrust signature in a hard vacuum (~5.0x10^-6 Torr) in both the forward direction, (approx. +50 micro-Newton (uN) with 50W at 1,937.115 MHz), and the reversed direction, (up to -16uN with a failing RF amp), when the thruster is rotated 180 degrees on the torque pendulum.  However we continue to fight through RF amplifier failures brought on by having to operate them in a hard vacuum with few $$$ resources to fix them when they break, so the desired data is coming along very slowly.  We are still working on obtaining enough data though that will allow us to go to Glenn Research Center (GRC) for a replication effort in the next few months.  However that will only happen if we can make the thrust signature large enough since the GRC thrust stand can only measure down to ~50uN, so we have to get the thrust signature up to at least 100uN before we can go to GRC. 

As to the theoretical side of Q-Thrusters, Dr. White has just developed the first cut at a quantum vacuum (QV) based plasma code written in C+ under Windows/Unix and VMD visualization software that utilizes the COMSOL E&M derived field data for a given thruster geometry that allows one to track the movement and velocity of a subset of the QV's electron/positron neutral plasma pairs in the thruster over time as they respond to the applied time varying RF E&M fields in the copper frustum resonant cavity and to each other.  This package also allows one to calculate the expected thrust for a given input power and quality factor of the frustum resonant cavity based of standard plasma rocket physics.  So far the estimated thrust verses experimental observations are within 2% for the first experimental data run I compared it to, but we still have a long, long road ahead of us of experimental validation before we have any real confidence in this very new Q-Thruster design tool.

Best, Paul March


Have you considered crowdfunding? I would absolutely donate to this testing endeavor.

How much money do you need to raise?

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13982
  • UK
  • Liked: 3968
  • Likes Given: 220
It's criminal in my view that this research isn't being better funded especially now that results are coming through.

Offline RotoSequence

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2208
  • Liked: 2068
  • Likes Given: 1535
I don't think funding discussions necessarily belong in this thread. Theory, potential application, and research results are one thing - figuring out how to pay for research on something that is not yet proven to create thrust (via the process of peer review and outside verification) is drifting dangerously close to territory that will earn a surefire thread closure.
« Last Edit: 02/07/2015 12:14 pm by RotoSequence »

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13982
  • UK
  • Liked: 3968
  • Likes Given: 220

I don't think funding discussions necessarily belong in this thread. Theory, potential application, and research results are one thing - figuring out how to pay for research on something that is not yet proven to create thrust (via the process of peer review and outside verification) is drifting dangerously close to territory that will earn a surefire thread closure.

But can you disentangle one from the other as easily as you suggest. I would say not.

Offline Jilpeter

  • Member
  • Posts: 2
  • Liked: 0
  • Likes Given: 2
We now have the shwayer, yang juan, fetta, nasa and vacuum test. This many tests almost are intriguing enough to warrant funding and lend credibility to the claims.

The only thing that remains is to build more prototypes and create a theory of operation that can be peer reviewed.

If the project lacks funding and it takes another 10 years to build the next prototypes we will have seriously hampered out development as a civilization.

Offline Star-Drive

  • Member
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 925
  • TX/USA
  • Liked: 1031
  • Likes Given: 31
..

Folks:

The Eagleworks Lab is still working on the copper frustum thruster that was reported on last summer at the AIAA/JPC.  We have now confirmed that there is a thrust signature in a hard vacuum (~5.0x10^-6 Torr) in both the forward direction, (approx. +50 micro-Newton (uN) with 50W at 1,937.115 MHz), and the reversed direction, (up to -16uN with a failing RF amp), when the thruster is rotated 180 degrees on the torque pendulum.  However we continue to fight through RF amplifier failures brought on by having to operate them in a hard vacuum with few $$$ resources to fix them when they break, so the desired data is coming along very slowly.  We are still working on obtaining enough data though that will allow us to go to Glenn Research Center (GRC) for a replication effort in the next few months.  However that will only happen if we can make the thrust signature large enough since the GRC thrust stand can only measure down to ~50uN, so we have to get the thrust signature up to at least 100uN before we can go to GRC. 

As to the theoretical side of Q-Thrusters, Dr. White has just developed the first cut at a quantum vacuum (QV) based plasma code written in C+ under Windows/Unix and VMD visualization software that utilizes the COMSOL E&M derived field data for a given thruster geometry that allows one to track the movement and velocity of a subset of the QV's electron/positron neutral plasma pairs in the thruster over time as they respond to the applied time varying RF E&M fields in the copper frustum resonant cavity and to each other.  This package also allows one to calculate the expected thrust for a given input power and quality factor of the frustum resonant cavity based of standard plasma rocket physics.  So far the estimated thrust verses experimental observations are within 2% for the first experimental data run I compared it to, but we still have a long, long road ahead of us of experimental validation before we have any real confidence in this very new Q-Thruster design tool.

Best, Paul March
Thanks Paul for an excellent update, much appreciated.

Congratulations to the Eagleworks team for obtaining experimental force measurements in the torsional pendulum in a hard vacuum (~5.0x10^-6 Torr) !



It would be most helpful to the scientific/technical community if you could provide the dimensions of the frustum of a cone (truncated cone) used in the Brady et.al. "Anomalous ..." report.

Of several estimates of the geometry, we have established that this is the best estimate so far:

Aero Best estimate as of 11/9/2014    http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29276.msg1285896#msg1285896
   
cavityLength = 0.24173 m
bigDiameter = 0.27246 m
smallDiameter = 0.15875 m

where "cavity length" is the axial length of the frustum measured along the longitudinal axis of the cone, perpendicular to both the small and big diameters.  In other words, the dimension labeled "h" in the following image:

It would be most helpful if you could provide the actual (internal) dimensions of the frustum (or at least if you could provide its approximate dimensions).

Thanks  :)

The copper frustum we built and now are using has the following internal copper surface dimensions.
Large OD: 11.00" (0.2794m), Small OD: 6.25" (0.1588m) & Length: 9.00" (0.2286m)  also see the attached slide with notes on the copper frustum's internal construction.  I've also attached a slide with the TM212 E&M resonant mode we are currently exploring in this copper frustum cavity with a screen shot of the end on VMD display that shows the 100,000th simulation increment for this resonant mode.  Each step in this plasma code is 1/72 of a full RF cycle, i.e., every 5.0 degrees of phase shift so each time step at 1,937.115 MHz is ~7.12 pico-seconds (10^-12s).  Next is a picture of the forward thrust signature from this copper frustum taken in a ~5.0x10^-6 Torr vacuum.  However we are currently trying to investigate the thermal response of the is copper frustum on the baseline of the torque pendulum after learning that I made a poor choice in how I built and mounted the copper frustum since it makes these thermal effects more pronounced in these thrust plots than they had to be.  I'm appending a partial COMSOL thermal analysis of the copper frustum and I would like to get someone better versed in the art of thermodynamics than I to see if they calculate the expected thermal expansion of the copper frustum AND the polyethylene discs over a 60 second data run with ~50W of 1,937.115 MHz RF applied inside the cavity via a 14mm OD magnetic loop antenna made from 20 gauge magnet wire.   

BTW, we have found that both the TE and TM E&M modes of this copper frustum can produce a thrust signature, but so far the TM modes appear to be the better performer, at least for the few modes we have been able to study to date.  (Shawyer and the Chinese used the magnetron excited TE012 mode in their frustum cavities without dielectrics being present.)

Lastly, like any busy lab, Eagleworks could always use extra funding to deal with its daily heart burns and required salaries to keep it going.  However we are currently a NASA sponsored facility, which sadly precludes being able to accept crowd sourcing or any other outside source of funding, unless it's through a commercial NASA Space Act Agreement that has to be approved up through NASA headquarters in Washington DC.  In the meantime we limp along with the meager funding we are allotted until we either run out of time, or we finally prove our QVF/MHD conjecture is close enough to the reality so that we can start building Q-Thrusters with large enough thrusts, (tens to thousands of Newton), to be used on manned spaceflight missions.

Offline Rodal

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5911
  • USA
  • Liked: 6124
  • Likes Given: 5564
...
The copper frustum we built and now are using has the following internal copper surface dimensions.
Large OD: 11.00" (0.2794m), Small OD: 6.25" (0.1588m) & Length: 9.00" (0.2286m)  also see the attached slide with notes on the copper frustum's internal construction.  I've also attached a slide with the TM212 E&M resonant mode we are currently exploring in this copper frustum cavity with a screen shot of the end on VMD display that shows the 100,000th simulation increment for this resonant mode.  Each step in this plasma code is 1/72 of a full RF cycle, i.e., every 5.0 degrees of phase shift so each time step at 1,937.115 MHz is ~7.12 pico-seconds (10^-12s).  Next is a picture of the forward thrust signature from this copper frustum taken in a ~5.0x10^-6 Torr vacuum.  However we are currently trying to investigate the thermal response of the is copper frustum on the baseline of the torque pendulum after learning that I made a poor choice in how I built and mounted the copper frustum since it makes these thermal effects more pronounced in these thrust plots than they had to be.  I'm appending a partial COMSOL thermal analysis of the copper frustum and I would like to get someone better versed in the art of thermodynamics than I to see if they calculate the expected thermal expansion of the copper frustum AND the polyethylene discs over a 60 second data run with ~50W of 1,937.115 MHz RF applied inside the cavity via a 14mm OD magnetic loop antenna made from 20 gauge magnet wire.   

BTW, we have found that both the TE and TM E&M modes of this copper frustum can produce a thrust signature, but so far the TM modes appear to be the better performer, at least for the few modes we have been able to study to date.  (Shawyer and the Chinese used the magnetron excited TE012 mode in their frustum cavities without dielectrics being present.)

Lastly, like any busy lab, Eagleworks could always use extra funding to deal with its daily heart burns and required salaries to keep it going.  However we are currently a NASA sponsored facility, which sadly precludes being able to accept crowd sourcing or any other outside source of funding, unless it's through a commercial NASA Space Act Agreement that has to be approved up through NASA headquarters in Washington DC.  In the meantime we limp along with the meager funding we are allotted until we either run out of time, or we finally prove our QVF/MHD conjecture is close enough to the reality so that we can start building Q-Thrusters with large enough thrusts, (tens to thousands of Newton), to be used on manned spaceflight missions.

Thanks so much, Paul for this excellent information.




I hope that all postings in this #2 thread will continue to abide by the guidelines here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29276.msg1301657#msg1301657.  The previous thread was locked because of "personal attacks" and "stupid" and "pointless" posts "that did not feel like this site's subject matter."

I hope that we can continue this thread in a professional manner concentrating on technical matters regarding EM Drive Developments related to space flight applications so that we maintain a healthy and open channel of communication with you (Paul March at NASA).  Also with all others interested in the science and technology of  EM Drive Developments related to space flight applications.
« Last Edit: 02/07/2015 04:15 pm by Rodal »

Offline Star-Drive

  • Member
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 925
  • TX/USA
  • Liked: 1031
  • Likes Given: 31
Rodal:

As a follow up to my previous post and in the spirit of open disclosure, I'm including our last null-thrust test that ran the RF amp at 10.0Adc while its RF power was being dissipated in a 100W, 50 ohm  dummy load positioned in place of the test article on the torque pendulum (TP), a picture of the new heat shields for our torque pendulum's upper and lower torsion springs, (more belts and suspenders to mitigate thermal drifts in the TP baseline), the reversed test setup drawing and the best reversed thrust plot obtained just before or during when our second and last 120W max RF amplifier was dying from internal corona discharges around its RF output circulator.  Apparently the RF amp's internal gas pressure had gone down from 1 Bar to an estimated 10 Torr or less after a few days leaking air in a hard vacuum.  And 0.1-to-10.0 Torr is where glow discharges are the easiest to ignite with RF signals.  So much for EMPower's "hermetic" sealed RF amplifiers...

Best, Paul March
Star-Drive

Offline birchoff

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 273
  • United States
  • Liked: 125
  • Likes Given: 95
Rodal:

As a follow up to my previous post and in the spirit of open disclosure, I'm including our last null-thrust test that ran the RF amp at 10.0Adc while its RF power was being dissipated in a 100W, 50 ohm  dummy load positioned in place of the test article on the torque pendulum (TP), a picture of the new heat shields for our torque pendulum's upper and lower torsion springs, (more belts and suspenders to mitigate thermal drifts in the TP baseline), the reversed test setup drawing and the best reversed thrust plot obtained just before or during when our second and last 120W max RF amplifier was dying from internal corona discharges around its RF output circulator.  Apparently the RF amp's internal gas pressure had gone down from 1 Bar to an estimated 10 Torr or less after a few days leaking air in a hard vacuum.  And 0.1-to-10.0 Torr is where glow discharges are the easiest to ignite with RF signals.  So much for EMPower's "hermetic" sealed RF amplifiers...

Best, Paul March

First off congratulations, and thank you very much for the information.

One question though. The use of a dummy load to the best of my understanding provides evidence to support that the thrust measurement device is not generating false positive data. Is it possible to run the Frustum in a null configuration? If so, is that in the plans before the next report is published?

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13982
  • UK
  • Liked: 3968
  • Likes Given: 220
Please be aware it wasn't me intention to take this thread off topic so apologies for that.
« Last Edit: 02/07/2015 05:16 pm by Star One »

Offline aero

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3628
  • 92129
  • Liked: 1145
  • Likes Given: 360
Has anyone notified Dr. M re. precise cavity dimensions and latest forces from Paul? I would but don't have his link handy.
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline Rodal

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5911
  • USA
  • Liked: 6124
  • Likes Given: 5564
Has anyone notified Dr. M re. precise cavity dimensions and latest forces from Paul? I would but don't have his link handy.
I sent Dr. McCulloch a message as soon as I saw the dimensions.  Thanks

Offline Rodal

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5911
  • USA
  • Liked: 6124
  • Likes Given: 5564
Well here's an open one...... http://scharstein.eng.ua.edu/electromagnetic.pdf

Thank you.   That paper deals with the surface current induced by an incident plane wave on a truncated cone.


For electromagnetic transmission properties of spherical transverse electric(TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) eigenmodes within a truncated cone, see the enclosed paper.

Quote from:  Xiahui Zeng and Dianyuan Fan
(1) We have developed an exact analytical approach for the description of the electromagnetic
fields inside a hollow metallic waveguide with a taper. Analytical expressions for the spatital
distributions of electromagnetic field components, attenuation constant, phase constant and
wave impedance are derived.

(2)According to our theory the modes configurations inside a tapered hollow metallic
waveguide are similar to those in a cylindrical hollow metallic waveguide, but the
transmission characteristics and engergy densities distributions along propagating direction
have a different behavior. It is shown that all modes run continuously from a propagating
through a transition to an evanescent region and the value of the attenuation increases as the
distance from the cone vertex and the cone angle desrease. A strict distinction between pure
propagating and pure evanescent modes can not be achieved. There is no well-defined cutoff
wavelength but rather a cutoff radius. It is interesting to note that the magnitude of the cutoff
radius is related to the wavelength and the cone half-angle. The values of attenuation and
phase constants for the spherical TE and TM modes inside the tapered hollow metallic
waveguide depend on the cone half-angle very seriously. As the cone half-angle decreases, the
value of the attenuation increases. The smaller the cone half-angle is, the faster the modes
attenuate. This can explain why large taper angle may improve the light throughout in
aperture probe which finds an important application in scanning near-field optical microscopy

(3) As follows from our calculations, we find that in the propagating region the attentuation of
some modes decays faster than those of others, and one mode after the other reaches cutoff in
the tapered hollow metallic waveguide as the distance from the cone vertex decreases.

4) In the tapered hollow metallic waveguide, light is well confined in the hollow core (air
region) because it is reflected back to the core by a metal wall.
« Last Edit: 02/07/2015 06:13 pm by Rodal »

Offline Star-Drive

  • Member
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 925
  • TX/USA
  • Liked: 1031
  • Likes Given: 31
Rodal:

As a follow up to my previous post and in the spirit of open disclosure, I'm including our last null-thrust test that ran the RF amp at 10.0Adc while its RF power was being dissipated in a 100W, 50 ohm  dummy load positioned in place of the test article on the torque pendulum (TP), a picture of the new heat shields for our torque pendulum's upper and lower torsion springs, (more belts and suspenders to mitigate thermal drifts in the TP baseline), the reversed test setup drawing and the best reversed thrust plot obtained just before or during when our second and last 120W max RF amplifier was dying from internal corona discharges around its RF output circulator.  Apparently the RF amp's internal gas pressure had gone down from 1 Bar to an estimated 10 Torr or less after a few days leaking air in a hard vacuum.  And 0.1-to-10.0 Torr is where glow discharges are the easiest to ignite with RF signals.  So much for EMPower's "hermetic" sealed RF amplifiers...

Best, Paul March

First off congratulations, and thank you very much for the information.

One question though. The use of a dummy load to the best of my understanding provides evidence to support that the thrust measurement device is not generating false positive data. Is it possible to run the Frustum in a null configuration? If so, is that in the plans before the next report is published?

Birchoff:

"Is it possible to run the Frustum in a null configuration? If so, is that in the plans before the next report is published?"

Yes and yes.  In fact it was one of the requests made by the blue ribbon panel of PhDs that NASA/EP hired to review the Eagleworks Lab's theoretical and experimental work last summer.  Even if will take a new mounting arrangement to get it accomplished. 

Overall though the blue ribbon panel's experimentalists appeared to be pleased with our previous and upcoming lab work.  However they ripped into Sonny's QVF/MHD conjecture because it relies on the quantum vacuum being mutable and engineer-able whereas the current physics mainstream thinks that the quantum vacuum is an immutable ground energy state of the universe that can-NOT be used to convey energy or momentum as proposed by Dr. White.   However they brushed aside Sonny's QVF based derivation of the Bohr hydrogen atom electron radius as a "mathematical coincidence" and didn't have a word to say what the Casimir effect and other quantum vacuum phenomenon were caused by, that can only occur only if the QV is mutable and can convey energy and momentum.   So Sonny and Jerry Vera took it upon themselves last fall to increase this mathematical coincidence from one to more than 47 times as they explored the QV created atomic electron shell radii for atoms up to atomic number 7 all based on the QV being the root cause for all of it including the origins of the electron and all other subatomic particles.   

BTW, IMO Jim Woodward's Mach-Effect (M-E) conjecture that is based primarily on SRT and GRT, is still in the running for a way to explain his and our test results to date.  However the M-E also has its detractors since it requires that instantaneous Wheeler/Feynman radiation reaction forces being required between a local time varying mass and all the other mass/energy in the casually connected universe, since this mechanism is used to balance the M-E's energy & momentum conservation books.  In the end analysis though I think that the ME will rest on the quantum nature of space-time, since in Woodward's eyes the gravitational field IS space-time, and in our eyes GRT's space-time is in reality the quantum vacuum that probably has at least 4 spatial dimensions and one time dimension! 

Best, Paul March
Star-Drive

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
1