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Space Travel AIAA PRESIDENCY 6 Q &A 10 PHOTO ESSAY 30 Meet your candidates NASA’s McBride talks X-planes 100 years of research at Langley FUEL-FREE SPACE TRAVEL What it would mean and an idea for how to do it: The EmDrive explained PAGE 16 FEBRUARY 2017 | A publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics | www.aerospaceamerica.org C1_February_Cover_v2.indd 3 1/23/17 2:38 PM COVER STORY ADAM HADHAZY | [email protected] FUEL-FREE SPACE TRAVEL 16 | FEBRUARY 2017 | aerospaceamerica.org 16-23_February_EmDrive_v1.indd 16 1/23/17 2:42 PM FUEL-FREE SPACE TRAVEL NASA researchers rattled the propulsion community last year when they reported generating thrust inside a vacuum chamber with electromagnetism instead of propellants. Was the effect real or a product of an unknown source of error? Adam Hadhazy spoke to scientists who aim to find out. aerospaceamerica.org | FEBRUARY 2017 | 17 16-23_February_EmDrive_v1.indd 17 1/23/17 2:42 PM s it a breakthrough, or baloney? Not long after the turn of the millennium, the EmDrive — catchy shorthand for “electromagnetic drive” — was a mere glimmer at the fringes Iof space-propulsion research. The idea was to generate thrust by harnessing a force was generated on the test article, roughly the strange effect that seems to happen when electro- equivalent of a honeybee landing on a flower. magnetic energy is circulated in an enclosure. That’s Unlike EmDrive tests abroad that appeared to where things stood until November, when the con- detect force, the NASA EmDrive experiments took cept began commanding mainstream attention place in a vacuum chamber, this one at the Johnson after a team of NASA researchers reported in AIAA’s Space Center, home to Eagleworks. Conducting the Journal of Propulsion and Power that they may have test in a vacuum chamber slashed a major possible generated an anomalous force with their version of source of bogus thrust: air warmed up by the ex- an EmDrive, a force that would fly in the face of periment’s equipment could jar the test article. conventional physics. How can it be? Even the paper’s lead author isn’t sure whether The paper, “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust the mysterious phenomenon is real. It’s possible from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum,” that an error source remains unaccounted for, and went through about a year of peer review involving that the test article moved a distance imperceptible five expert “referees” instead of the more typical to the human eye — on the order of 4 to 10 microm- two referees. Even so, some physicists remain un- eters — for completely mundane reasons. “The body convinced about the EmDrive. “They have a huge of work we did in the paper helped us eliminate a hill to climb here, because regardless of how it works, number of those [error sources] fairly definitively,” the EmDrive would violate deeply fundamental and says aerospace engineer and physicist Harold “Sonny” well-verified physical phenomena,” says Brian Ko- White, who led the experiment. For other possible berlein, a professor of physics at Rochester Institute sources, “although maybe we put a little bit of a of Technology in Rochester, New York. pencil mark through” them, they are “certainly not Another skeptic put it even more bluntly. “My black-Sharpie-crossed-out.” perspective is, there’s no ‘there’ there,” says Eric Nevertheless, White and his colleagues at NASA’s Davis, a senior research physicist at the Institute Eagleworks advanced propulsion physics labora- for Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas, as well as a tory in Houston are confident enough that they are former consultant on NASA’s defunct Breakthrough busy planning more tests, despite sometimes skep- Propulsion Physics Project and who visited White tical reviews by other technologists who have gone at the Eagleworks lab. “That conical cavity of theirs over the paper. is a microwave oven,” Davis continues, “and we Why has the paper generated so much intense know from physics that microwave ovens can’t fly.” scrutiny? If the effect turns out to be genuine and Part of the problem might be the breathless head- the technology can be expanded to a meaningful lines touting NASA’s verification of an “impossible” scale, it could portend a revolution in the space in- or “Star Trek” drive. Seeing this coverage, White is not dustry. Spacecraft would no longer need hundreds at all ready to pop a champagne cork. “We’re not of kilograms or even tons of propellant to stay in there yet,” he says. Although confident about the orbit or explore deep space. The International Space EmDrive on one hand, he calls for careful incremen- Station, for instance, burns through approximately talism on the other. “There are no shortcuts in sci- 4 tons of propellant each year, and more fuel must entific investigation and in doing empirical obser- be delivered to it regularly at a cost of about $20,000 vation,” White says. “You just have to have patience.” a kilogram. Trendy research The test Patience seems to be in short supply, though. Re- Specifically, the researchers found that per every searchers at the China Academy of Space Technol- kilowatt of microwave energy they pumped into ogy say they have been testing their own version their test article, which has the humble appearance of an electromagnetic drive in space, according to of a tapered, copper bucket, 1.2 millinewtons of a December article in Science and Technology 18 | FEBRUARY 2017 | aerospaceamerica.org 16-23_February_EmDrive_v1.indd 18 1/23/17 2:42 PM NASA’s EmDrive experimental setup: Microwaves moving around inside this copper, bucket-shaped test article in Houston appear to have generated thrust toward the article’s narrow end, hinting at a potentially propellant-free mode of propulsion. NASA Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese Ministry of thruster. The concept had occurred to him while Science and Technology. Meanwhile, the Pennsyl- evaluating closed-system gyroscopes as a means of vania-based company Cannae Inc. has announced thrust for missile control. Despite critics who say plans to launch an EmDrive-like, also-propellant- his experiments are imprecise and his physical the- less thruster into space on a cubesat as a technol- ories questionable, Shawyer has claimed success ogy demonstration. in experiments over the years. Along the way, his All in all, it is a meteoric rise for an outré pro- efforts have inspired the aforementioned research- pulsion concept that is not even two decades old. ers in China, Germany, and also White and his col- Roger Shawyer, a British aerospace engineer, left leagues, to delve further into the potentially Matra Marconi Space, forming his own company game-changing prospects of the EmDrive. in 2001 to develop an electromagnetic drive, tech- White and his colleagues recognized that the Em- nically known as a radio frequency resonant cavity Drive was a long shot, but long shots are the Eagleworks aerospaceamerica.org | FEBRUARY 2017 | 19 16-23_February_EmDrive_v1.indd 19 1/23/17 2:42 PM THE EXPERIMENT NASA researchers think they may have moved the copper cone below just by circulating microwaves inside it. The results raise the possibility of generating spacecraft thrust without propellants. In a series of test runs, an optical displacement sensor detected subtle movements of a test article attached to a torsion pendulum arm. Test article Linear flexure bearings Pendulum arm pivots on these Direction of thrust Ballast Rotation Mirror Assures neutral position of pendulum arm Electrostatic fins Provide force calibration Torsion pendulum arm Supports test article Optical displacement sensor Measures movement of test article and aids in calibration Magnetic damper Dampens harmonic motion Source: NASA Eagleworks Illustration by John Bretschneider lab’s raison d’etre. Indeed, the EmDrive might be tame the torsion pendulum from its rest position. White compared to other work at the lab, including theoret- and his team needed to describe this displacement ical and experimental forays into the possibilty of in terms of force, which meant they had to know developing a faster-than-light “warp drive,” courtesy how far the pendulum would move with a given of isolated bubbles of spacetime. amount of force. They placed two electrostatic Not long after the founding of the Eagleworks combs opposite each other, one on the pendulum lab in 2011, White’s team decided it was time to take arm and one on some gear near it, so that the fins the EmDrive for a spin. What ensued were years of of the combs interleaved. Before each test run, they work to set up the experimental apparatus, report charged the combs with particular voltages to in- preliminary findings in 2014 and conduct a year of duce specific levels of force, and then with the peer review for the paper published in November. optical sensor measured the separation of the fins. The result was a touchstone they could consult to The tests at NASA know how much force was generated on the test For his EmDrive, White hewed to Shawyer’s design article on each run. to construct the 23-centimeter-long, copper test Direct current power and data signals traveled article in the geometric shape of a frustum — a cone from the fixed portion of the torsion pendulum into with its pointy end lopped off. A small antenna the movable portion through brass screws into liquid inside the test article floods its interior with reso- metal contacts made of the trademarked alloy Galin- nating microwaves. stan, a mixture of gallium, indium and tin that stays This test article was mounted to the aluminum liquid at room temperature. These connections elim- arm of a torsion pendulum. This arm was free to inated cable interfaces and their confounding forces.
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