NASA tested an impossible space engine and it somehow worked

The Verge ^ | August 1, 2014 | Carl Franzen

[DannyTN]

If the tests of the Cannae Drive technology hold up, a trip to Mars could take weeks instead of months

7 inShare NASA has been testing new space travel technologies throughout its entire history, but the results of its latest experiment may be the most exciting yet — if they hold up. Earlier this week at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, scientists with NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories in Houston, Texas, presented a paper indicating they had achieved a small amount of thrust from a container that had no traditional fuels, only microwaves, bouncing around inside it. If the results can be replicated reliably and scaled up — and that's a big "if," since NASA only produced them on a very small scale over a two-day period — they could ultimately result in ultra-light weight, ultra fast spacecraft that could carry humans to Mars in weeks instead of months, and to the nearest star system outside our own (Proxima Centurai) in just about 30 years.

... More at site

[EEGator]

[dfwgator]

He did this and was rather startled when he managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator. He was even more startled when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he was lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had realized that one thing they couldn’t stand was a smart-ass.

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

Have you factored through the Bistromathematics yet?

[toast]

So with this they only need fuel for energy. They no longer need a propellant.

[Blood of Tyrants]

If one was designed to fail and instead worked, check your instrumentation.

[BitWielder1]

... built two Cannae Drives, including one that was designed to fail, and instead it worked.

I suspect a false positive here. Some measuring error.
I will hold off buying tickets to Mars until others can replicate this.
It did not stop them from some wild and amusing speculation on very flimsy basis though.

[mikrofon]

If the tests of the Cannae Drive technology hold up,
a trip to Mars could take weeks instead of months

"Ye can'nae brrreak the laws of Physics, lad !"

[GeronL]

This is great news. If this really works we can totally dominate this solar system, at least out to the so-called asteroid belt.

[dfwgator]

Or at least it offers an escape from this planet.

[GeronL]

Colonize the moon and Mars and asteroid belt for real with this

[gaijin]

I want it to work but I really, reallllllllllly have my doubts.

This sounds like the stem-cell cloning promises of that Korean doctor.

Watch —it will turn out to be vaporware.

[molson209]

Only downside is , it cooks flesh within 100 miles of it

[InterceptPoint]

I read about ion engines in 1952, when I was in High School, we are leaping forward.
++++
This is not an ion engine. An ion engine shoots out charged ions at extremely high velocity to achieve thrust from a relatively small (wight wise) energy source.

As described, it appears to me that Conservation of Monentum AND Conservation of Energy principles are being violated. Personally I have more faith in these laws than in this report. But if the report is true then I expect that some smart guy or gal will find the actual energy source that is being depleted as the craft is being accelerated.

[wally_bert]

The timeless words of Douglas Adams. Hitchhiker’s never gets old.

There was a lady in my office who had seen the movie but never read the book or saw the old series. I recommended both. Later I heard 42 a lot.

[dfwgator]

Only downside is , it cooks flesh within 100 miles of it

Well, there is that.

[MrB]

Was that at the same time as the Egyptians flew around with their own wings before the white man stole them from them?

[ckilmer]

And thus the Impulse Engine was born.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual indicates that the impulse engines are nuclear fusion engines where the plasma from the fusion reactor powers a massive magnetic coil to propel the ship.
....................
True story here. My brother was reading the specs on an experiment his son was doing in his graduate program in rocket engineering. The experiment was designed to re-purpose a device meant to create electromagnetic waves into a device that creates a big electromagnetic funnel to funnel ions in space in one end of a device and spit them out the other.

My brother told his son. “Wait a minute. You could turn this into thrust to make an engine. I saw this in science fiction a couple decades back.”

“Yup.” Said his son.

When I heard this story over Christmas I told my brother he had some serious bragging rights. His son was doing some interesting work as well.

[KSCITYBOY]

The fact that the one that was designed to fail worked as did the other tells me there may be an outside agency impacting the results.

[GeronL]

private space companies can own the solar system if this technology is really feasible

[MrB]

I think the one thing that everyone should take away from Adams is his first assertion:

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”