NASA: We're Not Working on Warp Drive
Keith’s note: With regard to the Eagle Works EmDrive “warp core” research underway at JSC, NASA HQ PAO has told NASAWatch: “While conceptual research into novel propulsion methods by a team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has created headlines, this is a small effort that has not yet shown any tangible results. NASA is not working on ‘warp drive’ technology. “However, the agency does fund very fundamental research as part of our advanced concepts and innovative investments that push the frontiers of science and engineering. This is part of what NASA does in exploring the unknown, and the agency is committed to and focused on the priorities and investments identified by the NASA Strategic Space Technology Investment Plan. “Through these investments, NASA will develop the capabilities necessary to send humans further into space than ever before.”
– Ellen Ochoa’s Warp Drive: Smoke and Mirrors, earlier post
– Ellen Ochoa’s Warp Drive Gizmo, earlier post
– JSC’s Warp Drive: Fact or Fluff?, earlier post
– Clarifying NASA’s Warp Drive Program, earlier post
– JSC’s Strange Thruster Violates The Laws of Physics, earlier post
Harold White gets to keep his job!
God, it kills me that we’re wasting money on this. Granted, it’s not a lot of money, but still.
For all the headlines, the truth is that there have been “no tangible results.” It would be interesting to know who is putting the story out to the media.
I’d be interested to see the review committee’s evaluation of this proposal. (I trust there was one.)
In other news, NASA is funding new efforts into the investigation and potential application(s) of straight-edge & compass constructions for squaring the circle, doubling the volume of a cube, and trisecting an angle.
The announcement sounds about right to me.
As to timing: I represent clients before all sorts of regulatory boards and agencies. They have a sense of time that makes the term ‘island time’ feel likeβ well, like warp speed.
Well, judging by the enormous headline you got. Maybe, just maybe you should start doing serious research on it π
Part of the presentation was about warp drives. White said enough to tell me that they were “working on warp drives”. White said that initially you would need the mass of something the size of Jupiter to make it work (he had a slide for that I think) but that they crunched the numbers down to bring warp drives from “Impossible” to “plausible” if I recall correctly.
As to EM drives, I watched that entire briefing…twice…and granted I don’t understand a lot of what was said I did hear White say that they still had too many variables to nail down before they could definitively rule out mundane explanations for the results they are getting. I seem to recall that he reitterated this in the Q&A session at the end as well.
Can’t blame him or NASA if the media missed that part.
The conservation of momentum issue on the EM drive is supposedly explained by the effects on the “Quantum Vacume”, which I don’t comprehend enough to agree or disagree. Anything with the word “quantum” in it gives me a headache. π
No one except White knows what a quantum vacuum is because White made the term up. Maybe he was confused by talk about quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, i.e. quantum vacuum fluctuations.
http://universe-review.ca/R…
You mean that this explains it?
Also, if the “virtual particle” is a particle/anti-particle pair, then shouldn’t they drop a gamma ray when they recombine, therefore making the event measurable?
Be nice to me in how you answer this question please. I’ve already admitted that I don’t understand it. π
My fingers didn’t type the words in my head. I meant to say quantum “vacuum plasma” that White proposes in part of what must be his “theory.” Perhaps he confuses what emerges from quantum fluctuations with plasma, because what does emerge is nothing at all like a plasma.
As for virtual particles, don’t confuse them with real particles, like electrons and anti-electrons. Real particles have to obey conservation of energy and momentum while virtual particles don’t (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle gives them a break in terms of energy and momentum).