At NASA’s Eagleworks Labs, located at the Johnson Space Center, scientists are working on a new space travel technology that could, if successful, dramatically reduce the time necessary for space voyages.
Titled electromagnetic propulsion or EM drive, the new technology centers on creating the propulsion necessary to move a spacecraft without using any propellant.
Instead of using fuel, the EM drive bounces electromagnetic microwaves inside a closed chamber to generate electrical energy and convert it into thrust.
No emissions are produced during the process.
Many scientists are skeptical about EM drive technology, which they consider “fringe” because it violates the law of conservation of momentum, a key component of Newtonian physics.
According to Newton’s laws, moving one object forward requires another object to move backward. In traditional spaceflight, propellant pushes vehicles forward and is then emitted behind them.
Because space is an airless vacuum, skeptics argue that nothing can move in it without use of a propellant.
But Eagleworks researchers, led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, say they have successfully tested the EM drive and measured the level of thrust it generated.
That measurement might be inaccurate due to interference by air around the EM drive, skeptics claim.
In response, White and his team members tested the drive in a vacuum, and it still worked.
Using EM drive, a spacecraft could travel to the Moon in four hours and to Mars in 70 days.
If the drive were put onto the International Space Station (ISS), reboots from other vehicles, now done to reverse orbital decay, would no longer be necessary.
More importantly, EM drive could reduce travel time to other star systems from thousands of years to about one century.
Faster space travel would not be the only benefit of the new technology. Propellant is not only expensive and heavy; it also takes up a lot of room on a spacecraft.
Once its propellant supply runs out, a spacecraft drifts in space forever, something that would not happen to a vehicle that uses electricity for propulsion.
EM drive is also being tested in the United Kingdom and China.
Source - Thespacereporter
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