[Bobboau]

identifying a less obvious form of systemic error and making people more aware of it is useless?

[Phantom Hoover]

Well it's not nearly as useful as a reactionless drive.

[Bobboau]

that's true, but it has a value that is above zero.

also demonstrating that science is open-minded has value. when there is evidence of something that everything we know says should be impossible, not dismissing it, has value. Even if you know it's not going to go anywhere, letting it fall flat on it's face, very publicly, is much better than just saying it's impossible because it breaks the rules.

[Flipside]

I think Science suffers a little from what I call the 'cold fusion' problem, in other words, claiming a discovery that turns out, on inspection, to be false can effectively be the end of your scientific career and it shouldn't be really (though, there were other aspects involved in the Cold Fusion case). The whole point of Science is to observe a phenomena, postulate a theory and then test the theory and find out which bit you were inevitably wrong about.

As has been said, the best way to test it is to stick it onto a little probe or something and send it into orbit, but that won't happen because if it doesn't work, the media doesn't really have the understanding of scientific principal to see it as anything other than 'NASA spends $ on experiment that doesn't work.', you're unlikely to see the caveat 'but we learned quite a lot from it anyway' until you are quite distant from the headline itself.

[jr2]

Quick, someone go get Elon Musk interested enough to put this on a probe and send it up on one of his rockets and test it.

[Luis Dias]

Can't do more than wait and see . And the "wait" part might take years, decades. So yeah. :/

[Bobboau]

I think this will be resolved in 2-3 years.

[MP-Ryan]

Yeah, I'm with the "proof is in the pudding" school on this. Build one, stick it on a chunk of metal and ceramic in orbit, set it toward the moon, and see what happens.

[Bobboau]

I really am sort of shocked we haven't had an eccentric billionaire throw a few of these things into space.

[jr2]

There's a reason they are billionaires.  They're probably waiting for 1) a few more tests, and 2) a way to make some profit on this (unless they're an altruistic billionaire).

[Bobboau]

there is a reason I threw that "eccentric" qualifier in there.

[Dragon]

Right now the probable outcome is 'test error,' which is of no use to anyone.

Except for scientists working on warp fields, hyper-precise force measurements (you'd be surprised how important it is) and theoretical physics. We've reached a point at which any results brings us something new and exciting in its own way. A failure we can learn from can be just as valuable as a success, at least after you've ruled out trivial stuff like "Duh, that stupid cable was loose". If you only want knowledge, there's no way to fail when practicing science (unless you let your own bias ruin your results, or maybe have a major equipment failure). Of course, the general public, businesses and people who hand out grants would usually rather have something at least potentially practical come out of the research.

I think Science suffers a little from what I call the 'cold fusion' problem, in other words, claiming a discovery that turns out, on inspection, to be false can effectively be the end of your scientific career and it shouldn't be really (though, there were other aspects involved in the Cold Fusion case). The whole point of Science is to observe a phenomena, postulate a theory and then test the theory and find out which bit you were inevitably wrong about.

Well, actually, I think that this is a good safeguard against sensationalist "discoveries" that have not been extensively tested. There are many things which can go wrong if you're not skeptical enough. Cold Fusion was such a case, FTL neutrinos also had shades of it (though admittedly, mostly courtesy of the press, I don't think anybody lost a job over that except the poor technician directly responsible for  the mess). On the other hand, too much skepticism is also harmful, because it may lead to dismissing extraordinary results out of hand. The Chinese team that tested EM Drive before NASA should've been given more credit, for example. One needs to find a happy medium.

As for sending an EM Drive into space, I think it'd be a bit pointless. The measured thrust is small and the power requirements quite large. Not to mention that without knowing how it works, it's difficult to come up with a preparation procedure for launch. Space is a very hostile, very difficult environment with many variables, many of which could affect the drive. We know it works in vacuum, but engineering a satellite to carry it would be a challenge. You'd have to give it auxiliary propulsion (just in case the drive doesn't work), large solar panels, probably a high-tech bus with lots of measuring equipment... Oh, and lots of paperwork. And money. It's hardly ready for use on spacecraft. It's easier and cheaper to just test on the ground. Really, the implications are interesting enough even if it can't be used as a space drive for whatever reason. Oh, and from a technical standpoint, space makes it harder to detect micro accelerations, not easier (despite how counter-intuitive it might seem).

[AdmiralRalwood]

there is a reason I threw that "eccentric" qualifier in there.

[qwadtep]

Shawyer's research is now peer-reviewed and published in Acta Astronautica.
https://hacked.com/emgate-wars-continue-publication-peer-reviewed-emdrive-paper/

[Bobboau]

we're calling this "EMgate" now?

[Mongoose]

I strongly desire to go back in time and swipe the second half of the Watergate complex's sign so that every goddamn thing for the next 50 years stops using that asinine suffix.

[Dragon]

You know what I find most laughable about this? Every single press release seems to be using a gridded electrostatic xenon thruster pictures when talking about the EM drive. You know, the ring that emits blue-ish haze, with a small neutralizer hole (or several) in the center. This is a regular ion drive, flown multiple times and about as mysterious as a normal chemical rocket engine. It looks (and works) nothing like the EM drive. EM drive looks like this:

And doesn't emit any haze at any time (if it doesn't use reaction mass, there's nothing glowy being thrown out, it stands to reason). I noticed that even the thread title likely refers to gridded thruster pics as well.

[Bobboau]

yup it was

[jr2]

EM drive looks like this:

And doesn't emit any haze at any time (if it doesn't use reaction mass, there's nothing glowy being thrown out, it stands to reason). I noticed that even the thread title likely refers to gridded thruster pics as well.

I get there's no glowy haze, is there any type of visible indication it's running at all?  Just curious.

[karajorma]

I strongly desire to go back in time and swipe the second half of the Watergate complex's sign so that every goddamn thing for the next 50 years stops using that asinine suffix.

Or cause a new scandal at the same place so that they have to start calling it Watergategate.