Futurology: Another Scientist Confirms "Impossible" EM Drive; Could Reach Mars In 70 Days

This 'Impossible' Propulsion System Keeps Passing Tests; Manned Mission To Saturn Would Take 3 Years

Why Is This Important?

Because EM Drive keeps proving doubters wrong and could revolutionize space travel.

Long Story Short

fter extensive testing, a

prominent German scientist has stated that the Electromagnetic Propulsion Engine labeled by many as ‘impossible’ does in fact work. It could completely change how we see deep space exploration.

Long Story

The idea of the Electromagnetic Propulsion Engine (or EM Drive) sounds so much like science fiction that it has been dismissed as such by many but it keeps taking steps towards being a reality.

Human exploration of space has always been limited by the cost and mechanics of rocket fuel, but the EM Drive tantalizingly hints at a future free of those considerations.

The premise behind the EM Drive is that microwaves bouncing around in a chamber are able to create propulsion — despite flying in the face of the recognized scientific principle that anything with forward momentum has to have a propellant that is launched backwards.

English researcher Roger Shawyer came up with the concept just after the turn of the millennium, but it was almost universally discarded until a team of Chinese scientists built a small-scale version of an EM Drive that worked.

NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratory has been trying to disprove the EM Drive for more than a year — but it keeps working.

Now, German scientist Martin Tajmar, chair of Space Systems at Dresden University of Technology has revealed that he has built a working EM Drive system that creates thrust successfully, even though he cannot explain why. The possibility that the results are down to error lessen each time research finds the forces.

Tajmar released his findings at the 2015 American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition in Florida. His work has made waves because he is a highly respected name and he was using ideal test conditions.

The EM Drive produces several thousand times more thrust than standard rocket propulsion, meaning that, theoretically, an EM Drive-powered rocket could take us to Mars in just 70 days, rather than the six-plus months expected using current systems. It took New Horizons nine years to reach Pluto; with an EM Drive, that time could theoretically be cut to an incredible 18 months.

Shawyer is now hoping to get his hypotheses backed up by other scientists via peer review. The only problem is that accepted science still states that propellantless space drives are impossible.

So much is still not understood about the EM Drive, but it could still be the discovery that opens the solar system up to human space travel on a previously unimagined level.

Own The Conversation

Is EM Drive about to allow humans to travel deep into the solar system?

Disrupt Your Feed: Like cold fusion, this will soon be disproved.

Drop This Fact: In theory, EM Drive could get to Pluto in less than 18 months and would make a manned expedition to Saturn’s moons a mere three-year mission.