Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive, the EmDrive ('Relativity Drive')

Obviously, this is a crazy idea. But, with Feynman, I have to ask: "Is it crazy enough to be worth taking seriously?". I wish I had enough physics to answer that question.

interesting. in essence what we have here is a variation on the photon drive where instead of being bounced off an open reflector to generate momentum you have a closed cone. at first glance this would seem absurd since the forces acting on the two ends of the cone should cancel each other out. where it gets interesting is that this guy claims that the math shows that the photons are operating in a special frame of reference: essentially even though the photons are enclosed they behave as if they were not. thus momentum is imparted in one direction and all you have to do is keep pumping microwaves into the cone. being able to use electricity instead of some sort of stored propellant would be a huge step towards sustainable space flight. here's hoping it works.

and even if it doesn't, science needs weirdos who are willing to work on edge cases. tesla's professor told him that the AC motor was a perpetual motion device and thus impossible.

He ignores the forces on the sides of the tapered wave-guide, calculating forces only for the end caps[1]. If he was to include the forces on the sides, I'm quite sure he would find that F_g1 = F_g2 + F_sides exactly.

[1] page 2, http://emdrive.com/theorypaper9-4.pdf

The Chinese also said their female Olympic gymnasts were 16 years old. I think it's a good policy to take what the Chinese say with a grain of salt.

China doesn't seem to have very good science filters. They're also funding one of the most hopeless AI projects I know of.

Sounds like a hoax.

I have no doubt that one day one of these crazy web stories will be true -- somebody will invent a field propulsion system.

Odds are this ain't it, though.

I'll be more interested once they start building a possible one.