Michael S. McDonald of US NRL : Thrust Measurement and Error Analysis of the IMPULSE Resonant Microwave Cavity Drive

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    • Michael S. McDonald of US NRL : Thrust Measurement and Error Analysis of the IMPULSE Resonant Microwave Cavity Drive

      the Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion Technical Committee of AIAA
      published among it's shared Documents
      the abstract of a paper of 3 engineer from Naval Center for Space Technology (in US Naval Research Laboratory, NRL)

      about planned measuremenst to be done on EmDrive like technology.
      The experiment is not yet done and they describe an effort to analyse sources of artifacts.

      McDonald/Nurnberger/Wiliams wrote:

      Thrust Measurement and Error Analysis of the IMPULSE Resonant Microwave Cavity Drive

      Michael S. McDonald 1, Michael W. Nurnberger 2 and Logan T. Williams 3
      U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., 20375, United States of America
      1 Aerospace Engineer, Propulsion Section, Naval Center for Space Technology,
      2 RF Engineer, Antenna Section, Naval Center for Space Technology
      3 Aerospace Engineer, Propulsion Section, Naval Center for Space Technology





      This paper reports on experimental investigations of a recently proposed and still speculative class of spacecraft propulsion using a closed resonant microwave cavity to produce thrust, with no conventional expulsion of reaction mass, and claimed to operate via several unconventional interpretations of physics.Such a device would have remarkable applications for spacecraft propulsion, but positive experimental results to date, while suggestive, are near the limits of state of the art measurement resolution and subject to significant confounding errors due to thermal drifts and other subtle effects. The most prominent of these experimental results are those of White et. al. from NASA Johnson Space Center. We report on the fabrication and vacuum testing of both a replica of White’s experimental configuration as well as a cavity and driving microwave circuit of our own design, with careful attention to maximizing driving RF power and cavity resonant quality factor Q in both the NASA and NRL cavity geometries. No attempt is made to independently explore new physics in this paper; efforts are limited to experimental measurement of forces generated by these cavities and characterization of errors due to thermal drift, magnetic dipole coupling,
      electromagnetic interference and RF leakage to the surrounding vacuum chamber structure, and other effects. The objective of this work is to rigorously weed out potential false positive thrust signals with null and control experiments, creating a trusted baseline dataset for later theoretical inquiry if merited. All test results will be reported, whether positive or null.

      info.aiaa.org/tac/PEG/NFPTC/Sh…nts/abstract_Mcdonald.pdf
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