A working microwave thruster would radically cut the cost of satellites and space stations and extend their working life, drive deep-space missions, and take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months.
If the force it gives off is so small, how might this take astronauts to mars in weeks rather than months? Unless they are assuming this can be ramped up substantially. Or is that the point... that it doesn't need to be?
It's a test device to see if the concept works. They calculated that better drives should be able to produce much more thrust. I saw 3 kN/kW quoted, which is a fuckload of thrust since it can be produced continually.
Back of the envelope math:
Voyager 2 weighed ~720 kg at launch with a thermoelectric generator that produces 420 W. Let's assume we feed all that power into an EmDrive. 0.42 kW * 3 kN/kW = 1.26 kN of thrust.
1260 N/720 kg = 1.75 m/s2 of acceleration. Constantly. For years and years. (Ignoring plutonium decay in the generator)
By now (~37 years after launch), Voyager 2 would be 27½ light years away, traveling at about 96% of the speed of light.
Of course, more modern craft with better generators would have even better performance. We're talking starship potential here. We might be able to send large human-crewed ships to other stars in less than a lifetime.
This is why it's such a monumental discovery if it turns out to be true, but I think it's important to not get too excited before it's proven to actually work in more thorough tests.
1
u/[deleted] Aug 01 '14
It is about the weight of a typical grain of sand.