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Exploration

NASA: We're Not Working on Warp Drive

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 11, 2015
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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

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “NASA: We're Not Working on Warp Drive”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    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.

  2. PsiSquared says:
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    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.

  3. wwheaton says:
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    I’d be interested to see the review committee’s evaluation of this proposal. (I trust there was one.)

  4. Tritium3H says:
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    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.

  5. Michael Spencer says:
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    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 like– well, like warp speed.

  6. q7ue7cmD06 says:
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    Well, judging by the enormous headline you got. Maybe, just maybe you should start doing serious research on it πŸ˜‰

  7. Bill Housley says:
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    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. πŸ˜‰

    • PsiSquared says:
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      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.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        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. πŸ™‚

        • PsiSquared says:
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          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).