While I appreciate and share your reservations. I am not sure how ion winds would affect or generate path changes in light beam. Unless your referring to the EmDrive specific tests; In which case that criticism would be void I believe. Since they have tested their tapered frustum Emdrive in vacuum and still found a thrust signature.JoeP wrote:Myself, I'm pretty much taking none of this seriously without any rigorous vacuum testing.ScottL wrote:I think Paul is being open about it all, but I think others are jumping to conclusions. I believe he's saying the results look promising, but may not hold up. People jumped on that first part and well you know how the average person can be. I think I read that there would be a vacuum test in June possibly which would put all of this to bed so the end is near so to speak.
My guess is ion wind or some issue with the materials transmitting force is otherwise the source of the thrust.
as for the issue of claims without scientific controls. In the purest sense yes GiThruster you are correct. However, Paul seems to be releasing preliminary results on the NSF forum for the sake of being open not because he is looking to gin up excitement. Hell he actually came back to the forum and posted that he got a "talking to" from White about being much more guarded in his posts as a side effect I believe of that improper article that was done. Personally I would rather get a constant stream of updates about what EagleWorks or any "true" Advanced Propulsion research team is doing (I do not count YET ANOTHER ION THRUSTER DESIGN as Advanced propulsion, VASIMR included) instead of getting random drops of information everyonce in a while. The onus should be on the public to not be stupid not on the scientist.