Scientists Skeptical of "Impossible Drive" for Several Reasons, Chief of Which Is That It Is Impossible

Via Instapundit, Popular Mechanics raises doubts and tangible objections to the claimed "microwave thruster."

Per a NASA paper, one test was designed to show thrust, another test was designed to not indicate thrust, as a control.

But:

Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the "null" test article).

So both the main experiment and the null-effect-expected control produced thrust.

This is usually taken to signal experimental error -- whatever way your rigged the test, with the "thruster" thrusting or not, you got thrust. So you probably did something wrong.

Then there is the matter of how this claimed thrust actually works.

This guy does not think much of the proposed explanation:

Ah well.

posted by Ace at 01:25 PM

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