The EM Drive - We may have just been given the planets . . .

My understanding of the EM drive:

What is an EM drive?
The EM Drive is reported to directly turns electricity into motion.

Why is that important?
Because if true, it breaks our current understanding of physics. It's mockingly called the "Bootstrap" Drive because of its claim to be able to "lift up by your own bootstraps."

So geeks are getting hyped over something that is probably human error?
Probably! (insert obligatory XKCD comic here; https://xkcd.com/955/ ) That's the way that things have usually gone with things like this but there have been a series of multiple tests by multiple organizations that are showing that _something appears_ to be happening. https://hacked.com/scientists-confir...

If it's not some type of error in recorded results and if it it can turn electricity into motion why is that important?
Because space is a vacuum. You could slap some solar panels on a satellite and it would turn the suns rays into electricity which would then be turned into motion. And the satellite would increase in speed. And increase. And increase. And keep getting faster and faster as long as it had light. A huge hurdle in space travel is getting the fuel to travel, because you have to spend fuel to move the fuel. If the EM drive works, that hurdle is removed and trips to Mars or even Pluto become literally orders of magnitude easier.

Is that all it could do?
At current recorded levels of conversion, pretty much.

At current recorded levels?
Yes.

Can we improve those conversion ratios?
No on knows. We don't even know if the current ratios are accurate or just some type of error.

But what if we can improve those conversion ratios?
Sigh.

What?
Nothing.

No what?
Nothing, forget about it.

OK, but you didn't answer my question.
Look, we don't even know if the results we are seeing are real or not. More testing is definitely needed but . . . well, but we are seeing some results from multiple place in multiple countries that seems to point to it working. That by no means proves it works, but IF (key word, IF) the EM Drive works, and IF it can be improved (if, if, if, if!), it'll be the biggest development the human race has seen since nuclear energy or the transistor. Possibly bigger.

Why is that?
What really matters is the ratio of Newtons/watt that an EM Drive achieves as a mature technology.
Tens of micro/milie Newtons/watt = useful only for unmanned satellites and probes.
1 newton per kilowatt =power generation on Earth plus manned space travel.
100s of newton’s per kilowatt: Congratulations, you now get to have a hover car that gets better fuel efficiency than your current car. And can go to the moon. For big planes, it'll be days or weeks at most to anywhere in the Solar System! And yes, you could finally have your stupid jet-pack. In fact, Interstellar travel might be possible at the 100s of newtown's per kilowatt ratio (when other tech catches up). If the EM drive works as-is, we'll have been given the planets. If it can be improved on to the same degree that we improved nuclear energy or the transistor, it will give us the stars.

Wow!
Yea . . . sigh.

Dude!
I don't want to get my hopes up, OK?! This could be huge; making-it-feasible-to-ship-solar-cells-up-into-orbit-to-both-cool-and-power-the-whole-damn-world- huge. But I literally cannot tell you the last time something like the EM drive didn't turn out to be a fake or some type of error. It overthrows our understanding of how the universe works and that is usually a huge red flag that something is . . . wait for a it . . . a fake or some type of error. And so despite yet one more lab saying, "Hmmm . . . it seems to be working" I'm still going to say that it is probably some unknown error and that the EM drive doesn't actually directly turn electricity into motion.

Do you have any hope that it will work?
Some. I keep waiting and waiting for the EM Drive to be disproved but instead I keep seeing it continually confirmed.
To someone in 1965 a 2015 iPhone is something they probably wouldn't have thorough possible.
To someone in 1915 a 1965 nuclear power plant is something they probably wouldn't have thought possible.
To someone in 1865 a 1915 airplane is something they probably wouldn't have thought possible.
To someone in 1815 a 1865 steam train is something they probably wouldn't have thought possible.
If you live an average lifespan you are almost certainly going to live to see an advance that your earlier self probably wouldn't have thought possible. This could be it.
But it's probably not. So we'll just have to wait for more tests.

So Aliens visited and gifted this right?

TheGameguru wrote:

So Aliens visited and gifted this right?

If it turns out to work I'm going with the theory of, "This is all a simulation and somebody just entered a cheat code."

Missed that other thread. My bad.

I love this thread.

TheGameguru wrote:

So Aliens visited and gifted this right?

I'm just saying, if you were an alien and wanted to unlock space travel for humanity, cluing in a small group of scientists on the germ of the idea that requires them to develop it from there would be the least disruptive way of doing so. You know, the opposite of Contact.