Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
Discovering a machine that could somehow produce thrust without releasing propellant would be a game-changer for human space travel. There\u2019s just one problem\u2014such a device would defy the laws of physics.<\/p>\n
This limitation has not stopped people from investigating the possibility, and the latest addition to the propellant-less club is an electrostatic design developed by a former NASA engineer.<\/p>\n
While the company behind the drive, Exodus Propulsion Technologies, says that the drive can achieve a thrust to counteract Earth\u2019s gravity, such a claim still needs independent verification and a healthy dose of skepticism.<\/p>\n
In 2001, British Electrical Engineer Roger Shawyer first introduced the \u201cimpossible drive,\u201d known as the EmDrive. It was called \u201cimpossible<\/a>\u201d because its creator purported that the drive was reactionless, meaning no propellant required\u2014in other words, it defied the known laws of physics (specifically, the conservation of momentum).<\/p>\n As with anything that appears to thumb its nose at Newton and Einstein, scientists raised more than a few eyebrows, and two decades of testing eventually boiled down to an inevitable (and somewhat predictable) conclusion in 2021: the EmDrive was bunk<\/a>. But that\u2019s the nature of the scientific method\u2014take a seemingly impossible idea, put it through rigorous testing, and hopefully get to an unassailable conclusion (or new discoveries that lead in other directions).<\/p>\n The not-based-in-physics<\/a> dream of a propellant-less machine, however, didn\u2019t die with the EmDrive. Instead, a new challenger approaches, and this one has a former NASA scientist backing it up.<\/p>\n While at NASA, Charles Buhler helped establish the Electrostatics and Surface Physics<\/a> Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida\u2014a very important lab that basically ensures rockets don\u2019t explode. Now, as co-founder of the space<\/a> company Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler told the website The Debrief<\/a> that they\u2019ve created a drive powered by a \u201cNew Force\u201d outside our current known laws of physics, giving the propellant-less drive enough boost to overcome gravity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,\u201d Buhler told The Debrief. \u201cThis discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Buhler stressed that this work is unaffiliated with NASA, and that he recently presented his findings at the Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference<\/a> (APEC), which is a club of engineers and enthusiasts eager to find ways to overcome the limitations of gravity<\/a> and physics\u2014and not always with the most scientifically sound methods.<\/p>\n In an interview with APEC\u2019s co-founder Tim Ventura, Buhler explained<\/a> how his background in electrostatics led to the discovery. He says his team\u2014made up of people from NASA<\/a>, Blue Origin, and the Air Force\u2014investigated propellant-less drives for decades before arriving at electrostatics. For years, their devices produced negligible thrust, but saw increases with each new iteration. This culminated in 2023, when this \u201cNew Force\u201d-powered drive generated enough thrust to overcome Earth\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n \u201cEssentially, what we\u2019ve discovered is that systems that contain an asymmetry in either electrostatic pressure<\/a> or some kind of electrostatic divergent field can give a system of a center of mass a non-zero force component,\u201d Buhler told The Debrief. \u201cSo, what that basically means is that there\u2019s some underlying physics that can essentially place force on an object should those two constraints be met.\u201d<\/p>\n Obviously Buhler\u2019s claims are pretty \u201cwoah, if true,\u201d but the history of propellant-less drives is filled with seemingly positive results that are eventually dashed upon the rocks of scientific reality. For the EmDrive, hopes for the device skyrocketed after NASA\u2019s Eagleworks team, which is dedicated to investigating new forms of propulsion<\/a> (i.e. warp drives), claimed to measure thrust from the \u201cimpossible\u201d drive in 2016<\/a>. However, subsequent studies\u2014including an exhaustive (no pun intended) one at the Dresden University of Technology<\/a>\u2014found zero thrust.<\/p>\n Before any alternative propulsion enthusiasts should start popping corks, rigorous, third-party research<\/a> will have to verify the results again and again. While it\u2019s not impossible that Buhler et. al stumbled across some unknown quirk of physics, it\u2019s an extremely unlikely outcome.<\/p>\n