Scientists from NASA have recently reported to have successfully tested an engine in a vacuum space. The results were successful in confirming the wanted results – to be able to take us to Mars in just 70 without using rocket fuel.Now there is always a chance of possible error, since the results haven’t been reviewed and verified by peers, but after so many tests, the engine has been proven to hold up pretty good.
NASA truncated cone magnetic field surface distribution. Image: NASA Eaglework
The engine itself is considered controversial for breaking one of the most famous concepts of physics – the conservation of momentum. It is said that for something to be propelled forward, a propellant needs to be pushed out from the opposite direction. However this isn’t the case for the new EM Drive since it doesn’t need any propellent, it simply relies on electromagnetic waves, leaving everyone astonished.In order to be sure of this new breakthrough, NASA engineers have been trying to work out any errors that might have messing around with the results and showing that the engine could work in vacuum and despite all of their efforts to find a mistake, nothing seems to be falsified or wrong.But if this possibly means what we think it means, the possibilities could be endless. Not only will we be able to travel to the planets in our solar system, but we would be able to travel in the systems beyond!And since it wouldn’t require rocket fuel, our payloads would become lighter and it would speed things up incredibly quick.For starters, our payloads would become a whole lot lighter without the need for rocket fuel.The leader of the research group that works on this engine, Harold White, says that a crewed mission to Mars inside a EM drive powered 2 Megawatt nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft would get to mars in an incredible time period of 70 days.And not only that, the NASA researchers predicted that the time it would take to get to our nearest star system “Alpha Centauri” would take 92 years!But for now Shawyer hopes that this engine could be used to send cheap solar energy-harvesting satellites that would beam power back to Earth. This could potentionally change our whole planet towards green, with solar power stations, city lights and flights powered by hydrogen. We could be living in a whole new revolutionized planet in the next few decades.Another unbelievable thing is the warp drive. The warp drive is supposedly predicted to be used to help fire lasers into the resonance chamber of the EM Drive. The lasers would travel faster than the speed of light suggesting that a warp bubble could potentially be created that will allow us to travel faster than light, and faster than what we see in Sci-Fi movies.