From: RELIABLE SOURCE!
Subject: EmDrive
Date: August 3, 2014 at 5:41:25 AM PDT
To: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
I just read the abstract on the NASA technical reports server:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052
and a couple of things stood out.
First, while they tested the thruster in a "stainless steel vacuum chamber
with the door closed", the chamber was not pumped down to a vacuum, but rather
was at "ambient atmospheric pressure". Consequently, differential heat
emission on different parts of the thruster could have caused air flow
which produced the reported thrust.
Second, they repeated the test with "an RF load to verify that the force was
not being generated by effects not associated with the test article", but when
they ran the test with the dummy load, it also produced thrust "even though one
of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not
produce thrust".
I do not understand why, with the resources of NASA JSC at hand and already
having the device in a vacuum chamber, they did not hook up a vacuum pump
to see if the effect went away as the air was pumped out.