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#3060
by
txdrive
on 21 Nov, 2016 19:41
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In regards to the recent paper:
The thrust rises slowly and peaks (break in slope) about 20 s after the RF power is initiated. Why is this not instantaneous?
The question should be,
why is it 5 times longer than 4 seconds which is the pendulum's response time observed on the calibration pulse.
As will be discussed in more detail at the end of the section on slope filtering, in order to run the test article in a fully integrated configuration, the torsion pendulum is operated in a highly loaded configuration, which results in slower displacement rates for the torsion pendulum when an impulsive force is applied.
Perhaps nudging the pendulum with a known force could let us get a time to use in place of "slower"?
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#3061
by
flux_capacitor
on 21 Nov, 2016 19:49
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Remember this from Roger?
[…] This is an unclassified UK document which is available under the UK Freedom of Information Act. We will not release the large pile of American documents as I doubt that there is the same freedom in the US.
Must be kidding: UK FOIA is effective since 2000. Whereas US FOIA is effective since 1967! The US version is like the mother of the other Freedom of Information Acts.
The name of end-user is indeed "The Boeing Company" on the contract you provided. But as you said "End User Undertaking" more specifically indicates the end user is the "armed forces" and purpose is use on a test satellite.
So it appears the contract does not involve a conventional branch of the Boeing Company (which is a vague term since Boeing is a vast multinational corporation) but rather a defense business unit of Boeing tied to the US Air Force. This may be Boeing Phantom Works.
Since the US Armed Forces are part of the US Department of Defense, any US citizen could ask their federal government for the release of the SPR-Boeing-Air Force records under a formal FOIA request. Boeing should not oppose such a demand, as a representative officially stated about the EmDrive that "the company is no longer pursuing this avenue".
https://www.foia.gov
What happens if they did oppose though, that still might not mean anything.
It is my understanding they can't legally
oppose a specific FOIA request, unless invoking National Security (which would indicate one had touched on a sore point!) but they could at least strike out sensitive information in the released version of the documents. That has always been the case especially with UFO files declassified by the CIA and other No Such Agencies. See for example the original redacted version of the infamous "Yeates affidavit" after the related FOIA request, attached.
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#3062
by
as58
on 21 Nov, 2016 19:57
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As will be discussed in more detail at the end of the section on slope filtering, in order to run the test article in a fully integrated configuration, the torsion pendulum is operated in a highly loaded configuration, which results in slower displacement rates for the torsion pendulum when an impulsive force is applied.
Perhaps nudging the pendulum with a known force could let us get a time to use in place of "slower"?
If there only were some kind of, I don't know, calibration pulse.
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#3063
by
Gilbertdrive
on 21 Nov, 2016 19:58
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Assuming 50% burn-up and 25% power conversion, a 1 GW supply for 65 years will need 200 tons of fuel. More than the 180 ton mass budget in the JPL study, so I'm guessing they're assuming higher efficiencies in both. I don't have the original paper, so I can't say more.
OK, so pro-rated that's 0.615 tons for 2Mw for 100 years. At 100% burn and 40% thermal-> electrical conversion, that's 0.19 T, my original answer: everything still reconciles. The 50% burn factor is new input and suggests that we need to at least double fuel weight. 25% conversion efficiency is fairly lame for a coal fired power station, but not unreasonable.
0.615 T is more, but the conclusion is the same.
Agreed on all counts but I think we would all be better off to try to perfect these microwave frustum drives up to at least 4.0 N/kWe before we go star hopping, because at that performance level we can send an IXS Clarke class starship to Proxima-B in under 30 years per NASA/JSC's Copernicus navigator software, see attached navigation studies by Dr. White and one of his Co-Op students by the name of Udri Pica from Italy.
Best, Paul M.
Paul, what's your opinion on whether a working EmDrive can provide a constant thrust for a given constant input electrical power. Some folks here just can't accept that claiming energy conservation is fundamentally violated. Thanks.
Since I have understood that the degradable Quantum Vacuum Theory make the Emdrive clearly non isolated, I would reformulate the question for Paul March.
How, in the Degradable Quantum Vacuum theory, does work CoE ? Does the Quantum Vacuum loose energy as a balance for the Kinetic energy gained by the ship ? Does the QV stay degraded until something else give it again energy, as for an empty oilfield ?
Does the notion of movement applies to the Degradable QV ?
Bob012345, you simplify the claims of the people who disagree with you. The claim is that energy conservation is fundamentally violated
if the emdrives doesn't steal energy to something else. You can not remove that
if, that was already repeated many times, from the claim.
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#3064
by
Star-Drive
on 21 Nov, 2016 20:54
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Assuming 50% burn-up and 25% power conversion, a 1 GW supply for 65 years will need 200 tons of fuel. More than the 180 ton mass budget in the JPL study, so I'm guessing they're assuming higher efficiencies in both. I don't have the original paper, so I can't say more.
OK, so pro-rated that's 0.615 tons for 2Mw for 100 years. At 100% burn and 40% thermal-> electrical conversion, that's 0.19 T, my original answer: everything still reconciles. The 50% burn factor is new input and suggests that we need to at least double fuel weight. 25% conversion efficiency is fairly lame for a coal fired power station, but not unreasonable.
0.615 T is more, but the conclusion is the same.
Agreed on all counts but I think we would all be better off to try to perfect these microwave frustum drives up to at least 4.0 N/kWe before we go star hopping, because at that performance level we can send an IXS Clarke class starship to Proxima-B in under 30 years per NASA/JSC's Copernicus navigator software, see attached navigation studies by Dr. White and one of his Co-Op students by the name of Udri Pica from Italy.
Best, Paul M.
Paul, what's your opinion on whether a working EmDrive can provide a constant thrust for a given constant input electrical power. Some folks here just can't accept that claiming energy conservation is fundamentally violated. Thanks.
Bob...:
"Paul, what's your opinion on whether a working EmDrive can provide a constant thrust for a given constant input electrical power."
Hard to say at this time without an agreed upon physical model for the Propellantless Propulsion (P-P) effect. IMO if these P-P field like drives are utilizing the ambient gravitational field of the cosmos to generate their propulsion effects, as both Woodward's, White's or Brandenburg's P-P models propose, then energy can be extracted from this field during their local constant input power operations, thus keeping their thrust output constant as the ship's kinetic energy increases. This type of interaction should be similar to space probes using gravity assist interactions going around another planet to get an extra kinetic energy boost to their next destination by infinitesimally slowing the planet's or moon's orbital velocity they are passing. In the cosmological gravitational field case, the required slowing would IMO most likely end up being a reduction in the cosmological microwave background temperature. However if the P-P interactions are strictly local in nature as posited by Shawyer and Desiato, i.e., that the P-P thruster strictly rely on the energy input from their local power supply on board the vehicle, then there has to be a performance plateau where the effective thrust falls off with increasing velocity from their initial start point dependent on the P-P thruster's N/kWe performance.
Personally I hope that one for more of the cosmological gravitational field P-P conjectures are at their cores correct for that alleviates the necessity of dragging along multi-gigawatt nuclear power plants for our interstellar voyages. So at this stage of the game, more test data is needed to first determine the scaleability of the P-P force output for the various P-P thruster types, and then determine whether this thrust scaling in linear or non-linear with input power. And this power to thrust scaling study will have to be performed over at least four orders of input power magnitude, (say 0.1kW to 100kW), to encapsulate possible non-linearties in the thruster's input power response that are pointed to by some of the cosmological gravitational field based P-P models due to their reliance on neutral-plasma hydrodynamic and or magneto-hydrodynamic rule sets.
Best, Paul M.
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#3065
by
SteveD
on 21 Nov, 2016 21:00
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I wonder if some strategy for a Mars mission using an orbit that increases time in the inner solar system, to maximize efficiency of solar panels, followed by some other braking strategy might not be more realistic. If nothing else it would seem possible to build up velocity during a stage of the mission relativeIy closed to the sun, then to begin deceleration, at a lower power, at some point before the halfway point between the Earth and Mars. This is assuming that solar panels will have a better power/kg ratio than a nuclear reactor once shielding and a heat sink are taken into account.
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#3066
by
Star-Drive
on 21 Nov, 2016 21:35
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Assuming 50% burn-up and 25% power conversion, a 1 GW supply for 65 years will need 200 tons of fuel. More than the 180 ton mass budget in the JPL study, so I'm guessing they're assuming higher efficiencies in both. I don't have the original paper, so I can't say more.
OK, so pro-rated that's 0.615 tons for 2Mw for 100 years. At 100% burn and 40% thermal-> electrical conversion, that's 0.19 T, my original answer: everything still reconciles. The 50% burn factor is new input and suggests that we need to at least double fuel weight. 25% conversion efficiency is fairly lame for a coal fired power station, but not unreasonable.
0.615 T is more, but the conclusion is the same.
Agreed on all counts but I think we would all be better off to try to perfect these microwave frustum drives up to at least 4.0 N/kWe before we go star hopping, because at that performance level we can send an IXS Clarke class starship to Proxima-B in under 30 years per NASA/JSC's Copernicus navigator software, see attached navigation studies by Dr. White and one of his Co-Op students by the name of Udri Pica from Italy.
Best, Paul M.
Paul, what's your opinion on whether a working EmDrive can provide a constant thrust for a given constant input electrical power. Some folks here just can't accept that claiming energy conservation is fundamentally violated. Thanks.
Since I have understood that the degradable Quantum Vacuum Theory make the Emdrive clearly non isolated, I would reformulate the question for Paul March.
How, in the Degradable Quantum Vacuum theory, does work CoE ? Does the Quantum Vacuum loose energy as a balance for the Kinetic energy gained by the ship ? Does the QV stay degraded until something else give it again energy, as for an empty oilfield ?
Does the notion of movement applies to the Degradable QV ?
Bob012345, you simplify the claims of the people who disagree with you. The claim is that energy conservation is fundamentally violated if the emdrives doesn't steal energy to something else. You can not remove that if, that was already repeated many times, from the claim.
Gilbert-drive:
1. "How, in the Degradable Quantum Vacuum theory, does work CoE?"
Per Dr. White's Quantum Vacuum (QV) Conjecture work is performed when the QV plasma is accelerated by the NET unidirectional E&M ExB Poynting Vector power flows setup in the frustum over a full 360 degree RF cycle.
2. "Does the Quantum Vacuum loose energy as a balance for the Kinetic energy gained by the ship?"
The energy required to accelerate the QV plasma comes from two sources. One is the local power supply driving the RF source AND the second is the energy extracted from any thermodynamic differential pressure gradient created by the frustum in the cosmological gravitational field that per the QV conjecture is the QV.
3. "Does the QV stay degraded until something else give it again energy, as for an empty oilfield?"
No. In the QV conjecture, as soon as the accelerated QV passes out of the pressurized state created in the frustum thruster's time varying E&M fields, it reverts via a shock wave back down to near its original density that further degrades back to the background cosmological gravitational field density of ~9.1x10^-27 kg/m^3 over time, if out of the solar system. This is why the wake is weakly interacting, see attached QV graphic. You could also think about a water wake created by a ship's propeller that has an initial velocity that dissipates back to the background over distance.
4. "Does the notion of movement applies to the Degradable QV?"
Yes it does.
Best, Paul M.
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#3067
by
Bob Woods
on 21 Nov, 2016 21:35
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A couple of days ago I recalled what a colleague of mine said years ago: "If an apparently smart, rational person, faced with the same data as you, comes to a seemingly irrational conclusion, then he probably knows something you don't."
Why mention this? Faced with the data from EW - one or two years ago! - there still seems a question about whether NASA should fund an extension of the work.
That's just irrational. I imagine there is hardly anyone, skeptic or enthusiast, who can't see that this avenue needs to be pursued and nailed down. The prize is just too great to submit to dogma over experiment.
So. What do they know that we don't? Or do we have to have them fail the premise of 'smart and rational'?
Budgets. Everything must compete for funding.
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#3068
by
txdrive
on 21 Nov, 2016 21:36
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As will be discussed in more detail at the end of the section on slope filtering, in order to run the test article in a fully integrated configuration, the torsion pendulum is operated in a highly loaded configuration, which results in slower displacement rates for the torsion pendulum when an impulsive force is applied.
Perhaps nudging the pendulum with a known force could let us get a time to use in place of "slower"?
If there only were some kind of, I don't know, calibration pulse.
In all seriousness... this is pretty bad. I use the calibration pulse to determine the time constant of the pendulum as 4 seconds, and get no thrust in their latest graphs. What ever was responding to power rapidly is now gone.
Yes, there's something odd at 17..20 s , but then, there's great many components being heated non-uniformly. Some may even be undergoing quasi-phase changes (plastics have a glass transition temperature). Some may be warping until they mechanically come in contact with another component.
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#3069
by
wicoe
on 21 Nov, 2016 21:55
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Bob012345, you simplify the claims of the people who disagree with you. The claim is that energy conservation is fundamentally violated if the emdrives doesn't steal energy to something else. You can not remove that if, that was already repeated many times, from the claim.
I think this is still not accurate. Kinetic energy is a special type of energy which is associated with motion and is dependent on the reference frame. When people talk about conversion of other (frame-independent) types of energy into kinetic energy, special care must be taken to make sure this conversion satisfies CoE in
every inertial frame. If an object gains kinetic energy without pushing against something, it violates CoE (since kinetic energy gain will be frame dependent, while the expended potential energy is not). If it is pushing against something (but not carrying this "something" with it, like a conventional rocket), it will have to spend more and more energy
per unit of time as its velocity relative to that "something" increases, since the potential energy will be spent for accelerating both objects in the opposite directions, which requires an increasing amount of energy due to the v^2 term (m(v + dv)^2/2 - mv^2/2 = mdv^2 / 2 + mdv, which is obviously greater than mdv^2/2).
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#3070
by
as58
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:05
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In all seriousness... this is pretty bad. I use the calibration pulse to determine the time constant of the pendulum as 4 seconds, and get no thrust in their latest graphs. What ever was responding to power rapidly is now gone.
Yes, there's something odd at 17..20 s , but then, there's great many components being heated non-uniformly. Some may even be undergoing quasi-phase changes (plastics have a glass transition temperature). Some may be warping until they mechanically come in contact with another component.
I agree. I see nothing in the paper that proves that there is any thrust. On the other hand, the claimed magnitudes of thrust seem to me incompatible with the shown traces of calibration pulses and test runs (unless the thermal effect is _very_ strangely behaving).
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#3071
by
Star-Drive
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:09
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As will be discussed in more detail at the end of the section on slope filtering, in order to run the test article in a fully integrated configuration, the torsion pendulum is operated in a highly loaded configuration, which results in slower displacement rates for the torsion pendulum when an impulsive force is applied.
Perhaps nudging the pendulum with a known force could let us get a time to use in place of "slower"?
If there only were some kind of, I don't know, calibration pulse.
In all seriousness... this is pretty bad. I use the calibration pulse to determine the time constant of the pendulum as 4 seconds, and get no thrust in their latest graphs. What ever was responding to power rapidly is now gone.
Yes, there's something odd at 17..20 s , but then, there's great many components being heated non-uniformly. Some may even be undergoing quasi-phase changes (plastics have a glass transition temperature). Some may be warping until they mechanically come in contact with another component.
All:
This will be my last post of the day. The EW Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) had metallic and plastic components with competing and non-linear thermal expansions and contractions when heated, see previous posted slides on this topic, that when driving the torque pendulum's center of gravity shifts, blurred the impulsive response of this test article in time, dependent on the magnitude of the impulsive force. For me, it is fully explained in the text of the JPP report, so please go back and read it this section again until it hopefully makes sense to you.
Best, Paul M.
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#3072
by
rq3
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:15
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Quick question for my RF engineers out there:
If I have a high power circulator with a varying load impedance and a water cooled termination, could the output power of the magnetron generator change due to a change in load impedance?
According to this website, the isolation of a circulator is dependent on the VSWR of both the load and the termination. Makes sense, circulators aren’t perfect especially when all forward power is being reflected.
http://www.novamicrowave.com/understanding-circulator-and-isolaters.php
And according to this book and many other sources, reflected power into a magnetron will cause a change in the resonant conditions and a change in output power as shown by a Rieke diagram.
http://tinyurl.com/jmseqth
However the manufacturers of a specific system with a circulator and 6kW output magnetron are claiming that output power is completely independent of load VSWR due to the circulator.
Do perfect circulators exist?
OR are they assuming any reflected power to the magnetron isn’t significant enough to cause a change in output power?
No. Perfect circulators (or isolators) do not exist. What they are claiming, and rightfully so, is that the load presented to the assembly IN ITS ENTIRETY will not affect the output of the source (magnetron). If the VSWR of the load increases, the circulator will dump more power into the dummy load. The source impedance and power output remains relatively constant. The power supplied to the intended point may vary wildly,(from 0% to 100%) as will the the power dumped into the dummy load (from 100% to 0%). The magnetron sees a constant load, hence constant and stable RF power output.
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#3073
by
as58
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:19
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All:
This will be my last post of the day. The EW Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) had metallic and plastic components with competing and non-linear thermal expansions and contractions when heated, see previous posted slides on this topic, that when driving the torque pendulum's center of gravity shifts, blurred the impulsive response of this test article in time, dependent on the magnitude of the impulsive force. For me, it is fully explained in the text of the JPP report, so please go back and read it this section again until it hopefully makes sense to you.
Best, Paul M.
JPP means the Journal of Propulsion and Power, right? I do not think the discussion is satisfactory. In particular, why does the measurement device respond so much faster to calibration impulses? And if there are significant non-linearities, how can you justify you measurement protocol, which (as far as I understand) _assumes_ linear superposition of thrust and thermal signal?
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#3074
by
zellerium
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:21
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Just out of curiosity, I started building the Cannae geometry based on their patent dimensions as attached and ran an Eigenmode sweep. Came up with the TM010 at 1.09 GHz which is pretty close to their resonant frequency of 1.047 GHz. I probably didn't make the grooves perfectly as I wasn't sure what the 1.513 dimension was referring to (bottom right corner of the attached picture).
The next mode is the TM110 around 1.7 GHz.
I wonder what balance between E field intensity and power gradient would yield optimal thrust...
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#3075
by
zellerium
on 21 Nov, 2016 22:30
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Quick question for my RF engineers out there:
If I have a high power circulator with a varying load impedance and a water cooled termination, could the output power of the magnetron generator change due to a change in load impedance?
According to this website, the isolation of a circulator is dependent on the VSWR of both the load and the termination. Makes sense, circulators aren’t perfect especially when all forward power is being reflected.
http://www.novamicrowave.com/understanding-circulator-and-isolaters.php
And according to this book and many other sources, reflected power into a magnetron will cause a change in the resonant conditions and a change in output power as shown by a Rieke diagram.
http://tinyurl.com/jmseqth
However the manufacturers of a specific system with a circulator and 6kW output magnetron are claiming that output power is completely independent of load VSWR due to the circulator.
Do perfect circulators exist?
OR are they assuming any reflected power to the magnetron isn’t significant enough to cause a change in output power?
No. Perfect circulators (or isolators) do not exist. What they are claiming, and rightfully so, is that the load presented to the assembly IN ITS ENTIRETY will not affect the output of the source (magnetron). If the VSWR of the load increases, the circulator will dump more power into the dummy load. The source impedance and power output remains relatively constant. The power supplied to the intended point may vary wildly,(from 0% to 100%) as will the the power dumped into the dummy load (from 100% to 0%). The magnetron sees a constant load, hence constant and stable RF power output.
Thank you for the reply, and also thanks to mwvp who replied earlier.
That makes sense, but if "the source impedance and power output remains relatively constant", how far can "relatively" vary?
If we're set to 6 kW output and the circulator's input vswr varies from 1.1 to 1.2, then we jumped from 288 W reflected to 546 W which sounds to me like it could cause a significant change in heating and thus output power and frequency.
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#3076
by
txdrive
on 22 Nov, 2016 00:07
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All:
This will be my last post of the day. The EW Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) had metallic and plastic components with competing and non-linear thermal expansions and contractions when heated, see previous posted slides on this topic, that when driving the torque pendulum's center of gravity shifts, blurred the impulsive response of this test article in time, dependent on the magnitude of the impulsive force. For me, it is fully explained in the text of the JPP report, so please go back and read it this section again until it hopefully makes sense to you.
Best, Paul M.
JPP means the Journal of Propulsion and Power, right? I do not think the discussion is satisfactory. In particular, why does the measurement device respond so much faster to calibration impulses? And if there are significant non-linearities, how can you justify you measurement protocol, which (as far as I understand) _assumes_ linear superposition of thrust and thermal signal?
Yeah, not looking good to me either. I don't see any model of how it "blurred the impulsive response of this test article in time", nor any empirical indication. What I see is that the response time for all of the calibration pulses is very consistently ~4 seconds at multiple positions of the pendulum, both before and after heating, including in the null test where the pendulum was still highly displaced by the thermal effects when they applied the second calibration pulse.
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#3077
by
FattyLumpkin
on 22 Nov, 2016 04:31
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Hi Zeller, I sketched up the Cannae geometry WITHOUT the "slots" which as I understand were deemed ineffective please see below FL PS Sorry she's not centered. I'll mail what I have to you K
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#3078
by
TheTraveller
on 22 Nov, 2016 06:21
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1st NASA response I have read:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/11/21/impossible-emdrive-thruster-cleared-first-hurdle/#.WDPpF_l95hE“NASA is looking forward to the scientific discussions with the broader technical community that will occur based on the publication of the Eagleworks team’s experimental findings, said Jay Bolden, an Engineering PUblic Affairs Officer with NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “This is part of what NASA does in exploring the unknown, and the agency is committed to and focused on the priorities and investments identified by the NASA Strategic Space Technology Investment Plan. Through these investments, NASA will develop the capabilities necessary to send humans farther into space than ever before.”
Maybe NASA should now seriously investigate the 326mN/kW as SPR reported for their Flight Thruster in 2010:
http://www.emdrive.com/flightprogramme.htmlThe Flight Thruster measured data points seems to be those that are in the latest International Patent:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2016162676326mN/kW was the high watermark in 2009 and that with a room temperature plated Aluminium frustum with spherical end plates.
Should also point out that Roger's 1st Experimental EmDrive developed 18.8mN/kW and in TE012 mode EW measured 21.3mN/kW (55.4uN @ 2.6W).
http://emdrive.com/feasibilitystudy.htmlSo it would seem that Roger's 1st EmDrive and that of EW's Cu dielectric EmDrive are not that different other than Roger achieved his 1st result 13 years earlier.
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#3079
by
Tcarey
on 22 Nov, 2016 06:58
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The discussions of spaceflight to near stars has focused on the power requirements to effect such a flight. These discussions have focused on nuclear fission reactors. Since this group has been on the bleeding edge of scientific controversy for so long and now seen confirmation of the effect I'd like to suggest that the power source for these flights may well turn out to be the Low Energy Nuclear Reaction otherwise disparagingly known as cold fusion.
That field has faced many of the same scientific prejudices and disdain that the EW drive has faced. It also has a dedicated cadre of DYI experimenters that have had many failures and occasional successes. Also like what has recently happened with the EW research there has been reputable research and successes by government agencies, in particular SPAWARS of the USN.
Just as the EW results have suggested that there is a new potential propulsion system, I suggest that the LENR results suggest that there is a potential new energy source that combined with the EM drive could be more than a little revolutionary.