Hello everyone! After a conversation on the main thread about the EM Drive, I reached out to the X-prize foundation and am now engaged in creating an X-prize project for/around EM Drive research. TLDR: if you'd like to help make this happen, message me.



The EM Drive is something that simultaneously seems impossible but/and has tremendous upside. They agree that this is precisely the sort of thing that the X-prize was designed for. I'll be working with them over the next few months to design and hopefully launch. Targeting late summer/early fall for launch.



Running an X-prize consists of three major steps:



1. Challenge design

2. Running the challenge

3. Judging the challenge



We are on step one and that has several key subcomponents:



* Most important is the design of the "challenge criteria". This needs to be some set of objectively measurable events that a) Competitors could plausibly achieve during the challenge duration and b) Represent a clear and valuable addition to the state of the art. This is the primary focus on this thread on the Forum.



* Identify and recruit Judges. In our case, this will be almost as important as the criteria. The panel of judges has to be fair, objective and very high credibility. Clearly having the X-Prize behind this challenge will help getting the right people on-board.



* Set the intellectual property rules for the challenge. These can range from "all the IP created during the challenge is owned by the entity that runs the challenge" to "all the IP is put in the public domain" and everywhere in-between. They have run challenges with all sorts of IP rules, and this can be a very important part of a challenge.



* Set the magnitude of the prize and how it is divvied up. Does the winner take all? Does some fraction go to the top fast followers?



* I will be working with them to raise the money for the challenge, but don't worry there will be a crowd funding component.



After the challenge is designed, the next step is raising the money and promoting it. They have a powerful platform for both and with the help of the good folks who are interested in the EM Drive, it seems likely that we could get several teams from around the world trying to hit this target.



