Shawyer at UCL Lecture: The Technologies of Hope

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • The important part is that the EM drive is propellantless. Any load give to the frustrum comes from a solar panel source. Thats the only power the device needs. You only need to uphold the EM wave in the frustrum. Nowadays solar panels are strong enoegh to keep the waves bouncing in the frustrum. You can also use a form of nuclear battery to achieve the result. And besides: common rockets use nearly all their fuel to propell into space. The moment the fuel is depleted the only thing you can do is aim and hope you pass a planet and use the gravitation of the planet to steer or to speed your craft up a little. in general your speed is fixed untill you reach your goal, because there is a limit of fuel. The Em drive keeps you propelling while in space, so you keep increasing speed (there is nothing that can stop you in space, beside a other body)

      The post was edited 4 times, last by Willem Staal ().

    • We all know why a propellantless drive would be so important. The question is does it work. The answer seems to be no. This "load" argument seems like hand waving. I saw most of his recent web presentation and to my mind he did not give a very good explanation of this load argument. And according to him no load and it doesn't work, like in say space. It drives me crazy when people spend so much time on how important it is rather than theory or evidence.