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[SirQuiamus]

What if the contraption just creates a strong magnetic field that exerts a direct force on their sensors?

...or something. It might be anything.

...

What comes to hypothetical WMDs, why not build a huge EmDrive on the Moon and make it crash into Earth? Or build a huge EmDrive on Earth and slow down its speed of rotation? Or plunge the Earth into the Sun? Given enough time and energy, it's totally _not possible!

[Skyrunner]

I post, therefore I watch.

[Ghills]

Posting to watch.

[Zrk2]

I don't have time to read nine pages. Have we demonstrated the hype is unjustified yet?

[forsaken1111]

I don't have time to read nine pages. Have we demonstrated the hype is unjustified yet?

Not really, no. It hasn't been proven or disproven from what I have seen. I recommend healthy skepticism.

[Zrk2]

I don't have time to read nine pages. Have we demonstrated the hype is unjustified yet?

Not really, no. It hasn't been proven or disproven from what I have seen. I recommend healthy skepticism.

Always. If it's too good to be true... it probably isn't. Of course, this seems reasonable-ish, so it might be true.

[forsaken1111]

I will put forth the observations that:

1. NASA doesn't generally conduct tests on things that sound as kooky as this, so they must have some reason to suspect there is something behind it.
2. The idea of the EMDrive has been floating around for quite a while now without any (to my knowledge) fully negative results published. I imagine it's not that hard to test given how simple it is to manufacture, so one would expect it to be disproven in short order.

Anyway I'll believe it when I'm on a 2 week flight to Mars and not before.

[Ghills]

I don't have time to read nine pages. Have we demonstrated the hype is unjustified yet?

Cautious optimism is looking justifiable.

Also, serious question - why didn't you just skim the past few pages?  I don't understand dropping in here to ask this if time is too tight to read a little bit.  If this were a big peer-reviewed paper I could understand it more, but all you need to do is skim the past 2 pages.   It wouldn't take more time than posting your question and waiting for responses.

[Zrk2]

Well, I read the OP, figured it was interesting and worth following, then was lazy and hoped for a TL;DR. Also, reddit has ruined my attention span.

[Ghills]

Well, I read the OP, figured it was interesting and worth following, then was lazy and hoped for a TL;DR. Also, reddit has ruined my attention span.

Oh, Reddit, the bane of organized information.

Forum threads are always chronological. Reading the last 2 pages of any thread is usually enough to figure out what the current state of the OP is.

[Sergarr]

Well, I read the OP, figured it was interesting and worth following, then was lazy and hoped for a TL;DR. Also, reddit has ruined my attention span.

Oh, Reddit, the bane of organized information.

Forum threads are always chronological. Reading the last 2 pages of any thread is usually enough to figure out what the current state of the OP is.

I've always wondered just why would you make anything that people might read through afterwards in non-chronological order. That just makes things sooo prone to losing their context that I don't even know.

[TempAcc]

Lemme try doing a TL;DR on the whole thing: NASA has been doing tests on a proposed form of propulsion that uses electro magnetism to generate momentum, which, if it works, could revolutionize space travel. Turns out some recent tests on this have yielded intriguing results that sugest that it actualy works. This has sparked much speculation on not only wether it actualy works or the test results were achieved due to a measuring error, but also the implications that this could have on the possibility of creating a working alcubierre drive, which is a theoretical form of travelling faster then the speed of light. The fact that its actualy a NASA agency doing said tests and that no one has been able to refute it yet has sparked a wave of optimistic anticipation and cautious skepticism around the whole thing.

[Zrk2]

Alright. I think I got it now. Although I still don't see how they've avoided violating conservation of momentum (however it could be false, I suppose, I mean technically conservation of mass doesn't exist). There was something about quantum particles, but I admit to not understanding any of that.

[TempAcc]

Whats weird is how nobody has actualy presented their own tests results that would refute its viability, considering the actual device is basically just a modified magnetron, something that can be found in ordinary microwave ovens. The measuring apparatus needed to detect the variations in the involved forces and phenomena is probably far more expensive then the actual emdrive device used in the tests. I mean, its not exactly something someone could do on their garage (at least not without a fair bit of money and knowledge), but any respectable physics and electronic research lab could do their own tests, maybe.

[Il Palazzo]

Lemme try doing a TL;DR on the whole thing: NASA has been doing tests on a proposed form of propulsion that uses electro magnetism to generate momentum, which, if it works, could revolutionize space travel. Turns out some recent tests on this have yielded intriguing results that sugest that it actualy works. This has sparked much speculation on not only wether it actualy works or the test results were achieved due to a measuring error, but also the implications that this could have on the possibility of creating a working alcubierre drive, which is a theoretical form of travelling faster then the speed of light. The fact that its actualy a NASA agency doing said tests and that no one has been able to refute it yet has sparked a wave of optimistic anticipation and cautious skepticism around the whole thing.

Here's my take on the TL;DR:
Somebody said somewhere on some blog or otherwise that NASA is working on the EM drive, which was then picked up by a bazillion of hopeful nerdy sites and further disseminated among the geeksphere, its sheer volume and the magic phrase 'its NASA' lending it all wholly unwarranted credibility.
In all this, nobody seems to care that there are no actual official statements from the agency about the supposed world-shattering discovery, and everything is just hearsay and high hopes clouding people's judgement.
This '<insert credible actor> is working on <some variant of> EM drive that does <not physics here>' has been resurfacing every now and then for years.

It's just a craze and a failure of scepticism.