If this works by impelling against the Earth's magnetic field, provided it is more efficient than a simple magnet, it could still have a market with satellite manufacturers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay
[2] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9087/how-often-does...
That's a completely different premise than the em-drive has, though. It's supposed to not depend on an external field; developing a force between two magnets wouldn't exactly qualify as (non-)rocket science today.
Yes you heard that right: guys who misunderstand physics go and design a reactionless thruster which, when measured in their shoddy experimental setup, produces a measurable thrust.
If there really is a measurable thrust, then the Laws of Motion are wrong and General Relativity is wrong. I'm disinclined to believe that long-held principles of physics will be upended by some guys who designed something based on a misunderstanding.
It's a subtle distinction, but an incredibly important one. But that same subtlety can sometimes be lost when it's discussed by the general public. The policy debate over climate change is an excellent example. Speaking strictly in terms of the often quoted statement that "97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree," [0][1] it's clear how different individuals can read very different meanings into that statement. For the scientists themselves, while the statement is referring to scientists as individuals, it's based on the published research that informed their views. Amongst the general public, particularly those who don't accept anthropogenic climate change, the statement is understood as referring to the beliefs of the individuals. It's taken as an appeal to authority (and it doesn't help that many politicians and activists who want to take action often use it as such). The same statement is understood in two very different ways based on the reader's background and understanding of what the scientific method actually is.
Returning to the subject of the em-drive, the reason for skepticism is precisely because it flies in the face of our basic understanding of the physical world. The more well-founded a theory is, the greater the burden on any new findings that would seem to contradict it. That's as it should be. But if those new findings hold up under scrutiny and are verified, even a basic, fundamental law can and will be revised. That's how the scientific method works.
Personally, I'd love for the em-drive to be proven if only because it would represent such a fascinating shift in physics. To say nothing of potential applications. But I'm inherently skeptical. Not because of a dogmatic acceptance of the laws of motion, but because those laws are already so well-supported.
0. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ 1. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048...
The people have been doing experiments on the EM drive and have been getting unexpected results.
Nobody really knows why yet, but that's kinda the point.
Is thermodynamics flawed? Is it pushing off of "dark matter"? Is it a completely new and novel scientific effect?
Any of these circumstances would be interesting.
To get a clear result we need something out closer to geostationary, flying for months well away from the earth's irregularities.
A recent paper [1] quotes this system's predicted efficiency at 1.2 mN/kW. Hall thrusters, a propellant-throwing electric engine, perform at 60 mN/kW. Non-propellant systems like light sails, laser propulsion and photon rockets perform around 0.0033 to 0.0067 mN/kW.
If this works, and that's a big if, a 50x performance improvement over the prototype is not unrealistic.
