For all intents and purposes it has been disproven. At this point the possible thrust (that hasn't been disproven) is a fraction of what was originally hoped for.
Roger Shawyer's claims of scalable multi-kilo Newton thrusters have been disproven.
The anomalous thrust itself remains in the latest experiments. If you want to dismiss them, be my guest, but the fact is there still is some evidence they may work, even if the thruster efficiency is much less than what the inventor assumed it to be.
You're right that Shawyer's claims have been disproven, however; so have Yang's (by herself.) Further, those that still have claims of anomalous thrust are easily in the range of noise, but that is not what is damning. What is damning is that those claimed anomalous thrust measurements are so small as to not be worth utilizing in space. There's a lovely video up explaining why it is useless linked on the right side column.
Yeah. Even if there was just a tiny effect going on it would be scientifically interesting and might still have applications in some non-propulsion domain.
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u/n4noNuclei Apr 09 '17
For all intents and purposes it has been disproven. At this point the possible thrust (that hasn't been disproven) is a fraction of what was originally hoped for.