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If this were proven true, there would be a completely manic gold-rush of capital into the area. Flying cars that operate at less than 1/10th the energy of cars
by danielweber 11y ago
If this were proven true, there would be a completely manic gold-rush of capital into the area. Flying cars that operate at less than 1/10th the energy of cars on the road now?
This would very quickly move from "let's wait for NASA to do more tests" to "let's beat NASA to the test."
That's all assuming it's real, of course. I'd bet against it.
- ZoFreX 11y agoWho says this will use less energy? The remarkable property of it is the (seeming) violation of conservation of momentum, not its efficiency.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y agoWhere are you getting that 1/10th number from? The most thrust anyone was getting was 750mN at 2.5KW. At that efficiency you need to have something that produces >32.7W/g just to hold itself up. That's rocket engine territory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio We barely have supercapacitors that'll deliver that sort of power output. For a few seconds, maybe. Not accounting for the mass of the device itself. Hopefully if this ever turns out to be something the efficiency will improve. But I'm not holding my breath. (Number taken from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9474610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9474610 )
- astrodust 11y agoIt is completely useless for flying cars. It has zero use for getting things into orbit. The only thing that's amazing about the EM Drive, if true, is that it doesn't require a propellant. It's extremely energy intensive, but since energy can be derived from a reactor or solar panels, this is often easy to overcome. In an atmosphere solar panels are drag, and a reactor is completely insane.