[AR] NASA test of quantum vacuum plasma thruster (was "Anyone heard of this?")
- From: "William Blair" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "wbblair3@xxxxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 07:29:40 -0700
The abstract says they tested it in a vacuum chamber left at atmospheric
pressure for some unspecified reason. I assume they did this to shield the
thruster from any drafts which would have been misinterpreted as thrust, but
why did they leave the vacuum chamber at atmospheric pressure? How could they
then be certain that air movement caused by the differential heating of the air
within the RF cavity hadn't caused the measured micro-thrust? I must be missing
something because this seems to be too obvious of a potential flaw in the test.
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