Evaluating the NASA Futuristic EM Drive

Mining & Minerals - Evaluations / Off-World Exploration, Mining, & Technology

Date posted: 11/09/15

Jose Rodal, Ph.D, Jeremiah Mullikin, Noel Munson, and Chris Gebhardt have reviewed the work by a group at the NASA Johnson Space Center who have 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 appear to defy classical physics expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum. Last summer, NASA Eagleworks, an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive... a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R an D) program. The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant. This lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft momentum if it were able to accelerate. However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive. Encouraged by these results, NASA Eagleworks plans to next conduct these interferometer tests in a vacuum.