The Emthruster: Thrust without reaction?

[stevebowers]

Conversion drive became available in 1520 AT, but it was (at first) a transapient technology, and was only mastered by modosophonts later as a form of retroengineered ultratech. Some technologies are within the range of modosophont ability but the transaps got there first. Others are so complex and abstruse that unaided modos might never achieve them by their own efforts.

[stevebowers]

This post by John Baez is instructive about the experiment, and some of its unusual features;
https://plus.google.com/1176630154135462...7vx2G85kr4
the experiment was conducted in a vacuum chamber, but without evacuating the air. This appears to be due to the fact that they couldn't get their instrumentation to work in a vacuum. But maybe this will be resolved later.

[stevebowers]

[stevebowers]

Another skeptical article;
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthe...-huGWPB28C

[wesleybruce]

You can't rule anything out absolutely will quantum mechanics and relativity are incompatible. Their fundamental incompatibility means that there is some fundamental phenomenon as yet not discovered. Its a massive loophole in physics that anything could fly though.

The guys at the Nasa lab that have played with the emdrive have also played with casimir effect before and that was once deemed to be fully virtual forces and contradictory to one or two laws yet today there are tools and technology using it.

People are willing to put money into emdrive testing it even if its 1 chance in a million because the yield would be huge. And its more fun than spending the same amount on a movie. (or spending time here; time being money.)

If the technology bears fruits soon then in terms of Orion's Arm its safe to say that the trust was small and unreliable until some S2 figured out what the hidden stuff of the universe was that it was reacting upon.

So far all the theories are rubbish but so were all the theories about light in the centuries before Einstein's paper on photoelectric effect. Yet while the theories were wrong light bulbs and arc lights still worked. A correct working theory helps in making something reliable but it is not required for something to work.

[ai_vin]

I don't know if it has any new info but I found another article on this subject; http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/e...-em-drive/