What is it about the Brits? From Jet engines to Warp drive.

Nasa says EmDrive does work and it may have also created a Star Trek warp drive

Nasa has been testing a highly controversial electromagnetic space propulsion technology called EmDrive and has found evidence that it may indeed work, and along the way, might even have made a sci-fi concept possible.

The EmDrive is a technology that could make it much cheaper to launch satellites into space and could be key to solving the energy crisis, if solar power could be harnessed off the satellites and sent back to Earth.

It was thought up and developed by a British scientist called Roger Shawyer, who spent years having his technology ridiculed by the international space community even though Boeing licensed it and the UK government was satisfied it worked.

Update: EmDrive and 'warp drive' are two different things - Nasa's still working on EmDrive

Read More: Roger Shawyer's exclusive interview with IBTimes UK in response to news of Nasa's experiments with EmDrive

Nasa has been testing the technology for a while and it confirmed on 29 April that researchers at the Johnson Space Center have successfully tested an electromagnetic propulsion drive in a vacuum, and although it did not seem possible, the technology actually works.

"Thrust measurements of the EmDrive defy classical physics' expectations that such a closed [microwave] cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum," Nasa's José Rodal, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Munson wrote in a Nasa Spaceflight blog.
What is EmDrive?

EmDrive is based on the theory of special relativity that it is possible to convert electrical energy into thrust without the need to expel any form of repellent.

Shawyer's critics say according to the law of conservation of momentum, his theory cannot work as in order for a thruster to be propelled forwards, something must be pushed out of the back of it in the opposite direction.

However, EmDrive does preserve the conservation of momentum and energy – to put it simply, electricity converts into microwaves within the cavity that push against the inside of the device, causing the thruster to accelerate in the opposite direction.

Shawyer proved that if you had a 100kg spacecraft, the thrust would be in a clockwise direction and the spacecraft would then accelerate in an anti-clockwise direction.
Nasa says it works when tested in a vacuum
The EmDrive created by Shawyer's SPR LtdThe EmDrive created by Shawyer's space company Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd(Roger Shawyer, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd)

The researchers explain that the reason why Shawyer's EmDrive models and EmDrive experiments carried out by Chinese researchers had been criticised in the past was because none of the tests had been carried out in a vacuum.

Physics says particles in the quantum vacuum cannot be ionised, so therefore you cannot push against it, but Nasa says Shawyer's theory does indeed work.

"Nasa has successfully tested their EmDrive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organisation has reported such a successful test. To this end, Nasa Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection," the researchers wrote.

Nasa says its researchers joined forces with a large community of enthusiasts, engineers, and scientists on several continents to discuss EmDrive theories on the NasaSpaceflight.com EmDrive forum, and "despite considerable effort within the NasaSpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artefact, the EmDrive results have yet to be falsified".

At least now Shawyer's work is being validated and he continues to work on a souped-up second generation version of the EmDrive that uses super conductors and an asymmetrical cavity to increase the thrust by up to five orders of magnitude.

In an interview with IBTimes UK in August 2014, Shawyer said: "There was an element of not wanting to disrupt the industry, but also a total ignorance in the laws of physics. They did make life difficult for me for a while.

""The space industry doesn't want to know about it as it's very disruptive. If the customer will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on launching a satellite, why would you want to make something that could do it cheaper?

"This technology is a quantum leap – it would enable vertical take-off and landing for airplanes, it's quiet and it uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, so it's green too."
Star Trek warp drive might also now be possible

Apart from the excitement over EmDrive possibly being a real thing, internet users also noticed Nasa could possibly have accidentally invented the warp drive – a faster-than-light propulsion system that enables spacecraft to travel at speeds that are greatly faster than light in sci-fi movies such as Star Trek.

Nasa researchers posted on the Nasa Spaceflight forum that when lasers were fired into the EmDrive's resonance chamber, some of the laser beams had travelled faster than the speed of light, which would mean the EmDrive could have produced a warp bubble.

A post by another user analysing the EmDrive experiment said "the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive".

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-says-emdrive-does-work-it-may-have-also-created-star-trek-warp-drive-1499098

Edited By Ady1 on 30/07/2015 02:22:59

There's an interview here on yootube

With reference to your fifth paragraph Shakespeare had a phrase which is relevant even today concerning smells,sweets, and roses.

It's not the name that's important. Don't get hung up and put form before function.

As an update to the 30th April article is this: **LINK**

I would like to remain politely sceptical until it goes into production and is shown to work. The reason for my scepticism? Cold Fusion. It also appeared to defy the laws of physics, but the output was very low. In fact it was so low that something else they'd not considered was tweaking the instruments. The output from this is also very low, which has the hallmarks of another 'Oops, I forgot that effect'.

Regards,

Richard.

Perhaps if it does work we can round up all the bankers and send them into outer space - problem solved.

It will be an American invention all to soon, at least as far as they are concerned. As for jet engines Germany invented the jet engine around the same time and although I hate to admit it, it was a better design than the English version and is the direct descendent of modern jet engines. The Diesel engine on the other hand was invented by a Brit just before Rudolfs but he patented it earlier.

Antecedent = before or previous to

Does anyone else get annoyed by statements like this? Just where do they think the energy comes from to make the liquid hydrogen fuel? In the UK it's mostly oil fired power stations - very green?

As for generating energy on satellites and sending it back to Earth - there is enough fuss now over the minute amount of EM radiation produced by mobile phone masts so let's beam gigawatts back to earth!

Russell.

I've always thought the best way to use "green power " is for jobs like this. When the wind blows or the sun is shining then make hydrogen, or clean water, smelt aluminium, etc. A bit simplistic I know, but makes sense to me.

We have two bands of desert region around the earth, mostly populated by poor countries(except the few where oil is abundant). If the power companies would set up solar panels in those regions it would solve a lot of the earth's power needs and generate revenue for those poor countries.

It's relatively easy to make hydrogen, either by electrolysis or cracking hydrocarbons. The problem is storing it in sufficient density to be useful for vehicle etc use. It doesn't liquify at sensible temperatures and pressures, so for storage it tends to be compressed it to silly pressures, like 300-700 bar - and even then the capacity is fairly limited. BMW uses liquid storage for their hydrogen-powered IC engines, with large, vacuum insulated tanks to keep the contents cold.

When you hear how marvellous hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen FC vehicles are, you have to bear in mind the lack of a supply infrastructure. There are fuel cells that can run on more convenient fuels like aviation fuel and hydrocarbon gases (eg those used for combined heat and power) but we still don't see any of those in the automotive market. The installations look like miniature(?) chemical plants, so aren't very practical for vehicle installations.

Ballard have been investing lots of other peoples' money in fuel cells for many years but the results seem to be always 10 years away to my mind. The latest corporate donor is VW who seem to have decided it is their turn to keep Ballard afloat.

Murray

There has been a lot of successful work done on storing hydrogen in metals and releasing it via slight amounts of heat. Many of the motor companies have done it and run cars around using it.

**LINK**

There seems to be more interest now in fuel cells for obvious reasons rather than simply powering a piston engine.

The companies who actually manufacture cars are an odd lot. They will often spend large amounts of money researching something new often badly and then do nothing with it.

I spent 15 years working on what may well be a mad electric vehicle but maybe not. I tonne vans with 1 tonne of lead acid batteries under the floor. The vans just needed the suspension beefing up. Vauxhall was involved. These vans were chosen because of the usual range requirements when used as delivery vehicles. Also did a coach, a taxi and a superior version of the van for HRH who liked to use it for driving round the royal estates. Several very famous names used to insist on having the taxi around to carry them about. The coach's longest trip was from B'ham to London and back. The vans were used by Royal Mail and some newspapers. The technology went to California and I have no idea what happened to it. Last thing I did on them was some of the work on the electronics to get reliability up to well over 1,000,000 total fleet miles. Not much of the work as that isn't really my field. Then it folded. Biggest problem really - suitable batteries. Lead acid doesn't take kindly to charge discharge cycling. Sodium sulphur has been around the corner for donkeys years. Many other couples have been around for a very long time. Some interesting ones are used to power torpedoes but they only have to discharge once. Charging is the catch. Lots of cells in series are needed to get high voltages to keep the currents down. Fixes for that problem - not all of the cells being exactly identical in several respects tend to be belts and braces. Fuel cells just need fuel. It might happen one day.

John

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It's quite an education to see video of crash/impact tests on vehicle fuel cells. Shockingly violent explosions and fires. I really do not ever want a vehicle with a fuel cell after witnessing such testing first hand in industry and also seeing video. The cells themselves are often more flimsy and dangerous than the hydrogen storage systems which are usually very robust.

Regular fuel tanks on gasoline powered cars from mid 1970's to now in crashes are surprisingly non-violent, and it takes a series of sequential failure events to happen to get a fire and even more sequential events to get an explosion.

Re: "green" - I won't discuss green when describing anything - it's become a political term and the windbag spin doctor users of the term rarely seem to think of the full energy transfer/waste management chain before proclaiming things or processes "green". Meaningless, really.

.

Jason,

Please excuse my correcting your typo.

latitude longitude

MichaelG.

I thought from the movies that all cars exploded when they crashed particularly in the USA. Seriously until a famous American lawyer whose name I forget became seriously annoyed about a number of factors about current cars when he was arround that were killing people and did some thing about it cars did burst into flames and also failed in a number of other lethal ways. This caused the industry to clean up it's act and take a number of design features and cars off the road. Given the will, the resources and a suitable fuel cell it could be done. A cheaper option is what we seem to be getting - lpg and ethanol etc as that requires almost zero development. Development costs go a long way to setting the price we pay for all sorts of things.

The green thing is a total energy budget aspect. Those EV's I mentioned just about won over internal combustion. A good part of that was down to the efficiency of the way the electricity was generated. Things don't look good these days in this area. Subsidies aimed at allowing things to eventually get cheap and cost effective but in real terms just start up a number of companies that do it because there is money in it and have no interest in developing the technology that they are using. The lifetime of some of the things introduced should prove interesting too. Victorian style engineering has gone out of the window. We all live in a disposable world and that in practice probably has more bearings on green aspects.

John

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Was involved with a fellow whose aim was to give poor Africian people water wells, so they could have safe drinking water, He had several wells put in and after a year or two went back to see how they were doing. All the wells had a hand pump and had broken down. He asked why no one had fixed them, they said no one knew how to. And besides They preferred river water as it had "some taste." Well water was to bland for them. Before putting things in place in a country infrastructure needs to be in place with people that can use, pay and maintain it. Sort of like USA and England once had.

But they didn't have the steels, so there engines were best viewed as disposable items.

Neil

Thought that was arguably the Chinese, then let alone the Greeks and Romans etc way before us