NASAs Space Engine Tested

Spaceflight is difficult. Blasting heavy cargoes and spacecraft to respectable speeds over interplanetary distances requires so much propellant to sent rockets to far away places – unless you have an engine that can generate thrust without fuel. Scientists at NASA have been building and testing the EmDrive – which is said to produce thrust simply by bouncing microwaves around inside a closed cone shaped cavity. Sounds wonderful. No fuel is required. However, Caleb Roth has sent in details of independent researchers in Germany, that have built there own version of EmDrive with the aim of testing propulsion concepts – and determining ig the results are successful or an artifact of some kind. Sadly, the latter appears to be the case. It seems the thrust is not coming from the EmDrive itsle but from some kind of electromagnetic interaction. They tested the EmDrive in a vacuum chamber with a variety of sensors onboard. It seems the machine was affected by Earth's own magnetic field – and this is where the thrust was coming from. When the turned on the system but damped down the power going into the device there was essentially no microwaves bouncing around – but the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust. This is something it should not have done if it works the way NASA claimed. They conclude that the effect they haved measured is Earth's magnetic field interacting with power cables. No doubt NASA will now repeat this exercise – which will determine if they are off beam or not.