An article at NasaSpaceFlight.com is claiming that the superficially reactionless EmDrive has again been tested at NASA Eagleworks, this time in hard vacuum, and the anomalous thrust is still being detected:
A group at NASA's Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics' expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.
With the popular explanations of thermal convection or atmospheric ionization being ruled out by operation in vacuum, and thrust thousands of times greater than expected from a photon rocket, is it time to start taking the EM Drive seriously as a fundamentally new form of propulsion, and possibly a door to new physics?
Roger Shawyer, the inventor of the EmDrive, claims that the device's efficiency will scale even further with greater levels of power, potentially enabling fast interstellar travel powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator or nuclear fission.
Previously: NASA Validates "Impossible" Space Drive's Thrust
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SubiculumHammer on Friday May 01 2015, @07:52PM
How depressing would it be if the stars would always be out of reach. The article states that such a drive might reach alpha centauri in less than a century, and that is probably absent any innovations that would occur after we find explanations for how it works...if it works, I mean.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday May 01 2015, @09:27PM
(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Friday May 01 2015, @10:09PM
I'm just hoping to extend my life until the singularity. Then the computer will help me figure out how to get the rest of the way to another world. Thanks, Ray!