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Timed poll - EM Drive: Fact or Fallacy?


Alpha 360

EM Drive poll  

36 members have voted

  1. 1. Does the EM Drive work as intended?

    • Yes
      1
    • No
      35

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  • Poll closed on 09/04/2019 at 12:00 AM

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Hello, this will be quick. I'm working on a youtube video and I need as many of y'all as possible to take the poll above: whether or not you think that the EM Drive runs is valid. Thanks for taking this poll, really appreciate it.

I'll post a link to video once its completed. Disclaimer, it was done on a 0$ budget by three guys without a lot of spare time and so the quality is pretty bad :/. You have been warned, but we do have a debate with valid reasons and statements. 

Happy Explosions!

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I believe the latest tests have shown that it doesn’t work, and that the positive tests results were due to interactions with the power cables. If the latest tests were more encouraging, it would have had tests in orbit by now. Unless that’s what the X-37B is doing... 

Although having a reactionless space drive with a power-to-thrust ratio orders of magnitude better than a photon drive would certainly be nice. We’d probably find it next to the fountain of youth , built from unobtainium. 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
Autocowrecked
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The EM Drive has been reasonably well debunked at this point. Dresden University of Technology did the tests that debunked it for most of the mainstream. They used a rig with very accurate force measurements and the ability to reorient it. Based on their observations most have concluded that the thrust measured is just inadequately shielded EM fields interacting with Earth's magnetic field. There are a number of tests that back this up, but probably the most convincing is that when they attenuated the radio waves going into the resonance chamber the thrust did not change.

A far more interesting question is whether it was worthwhile investigating a fringe hypothesis like this with public funds. I tend to say yes since there was enough evidence that something was going on to warrant looking and we can't be closed off to all things contradicting established theories, though I don't think continuing investigation is warranted (at least not with public funds). Having said that the EM Drive always fell in the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" category and it never delivered more than vague indications until we arrived at a more plausible explanation.

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i don't think the dresden tests were credible because they were using a new and unproven torsion balance design. there were a lot of problems with that test setup. 

but that doesn't mean that i think the drives tested aren't bunk. the woodward drive or mega drive as they renamed it looked like it had a more interesting basis for operation, and is much more compelling scientifically. a stark contrast the the em drive which "works" but there is no scientific basis for why or how it should work. the science out approach seems to sit better with me, but until they show me a hovering test article i have my doubts. after all its just a mechanical oscillator tuned to some "magic" frequency that woodward stumbled onto accidentally, but at least he acknowledges that if the mach principle is wrong he has merely invented a very expensive rather ineffitient viberator. 

however i should point out that opinion polls are not valid science. the drives work or don't work independent of whether we think they work or not. 

Edited by Nuke
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On 8/30/2019 at 8:07 PM, satnet said:

The EM Drive has been reasonably well debunked at this point. Dresden University of Technology did the tests that debunked it for most of the mainstream. They used a rig with very accurate force measurements and the ability to reorient it. Based on their observations most have concluded that the thrust measured is just inadequately shielded EM fields interacting with Earth's magnetic field. There are a number of tests that back this up, but probably the most convincing is that when they attenuated the radio waves going into the resonance chamber the thrust did not change.

A far more interesting question is whether it was worthwhile investigating a fringe hypothesis like this with public funds. I tend to say yes since there was enough evidence that something was going on to warrant looking and we can't be closed off to all things contradicting established theories, though I don't think continuing investigation is warranted (at least not with public funds). Having said that the EM Drive always fell in the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" category and it never delivered more than vague indications until we arrived at a more plausible explanation.

Yes, its unlikely to work as intended. 
Still its the sort of low chance high payoff stuff you might want to check into as long as the test is cheap. 

Kind of like how drug companies test thousands of drugs each year trying to find some who work. 
As EM drive is mostly about deep space its not a lot of cooperate interest so NASA had to do this themselves. 

Edited by magnemoe
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