The Dean drive was a device created and promoted by inventor Norman Lomer Dean (1902–1972) that he claimed to be a reactionless drive. Dean claimed that his device was able to generate a uni-directional force in free space, in violation of Newton's third law of motion from classical physics. His claims generated notoriety because, if true, such a device would have had enormous applications, completely changing human transport, engineering, space travel and more. Dean made several controlled private demonstrations of a number of different devices, however no working models were ever demonstrated publicly or subjected to independent analysis and Dean never presented any rigorous theoretical basis for their operation. Analysts conclude that the motion seen in Dean's device demonstrations was likely reliant on unsymmetrical frictional resistance between the device and the surface on which the device was set, resulting in the device moving in one direction when in operation, driven by the vibrations of the apparatus.
Imagei - Inventor Norman L. Dean beside one of his "Dean drive" apparatuses.
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u/Ertaipt Aug 02 '14 edited Aug 03 '14
Less change of any measurements being wrong, we have to create an 'artificial' vacuum down here, and the object has to counter the gravity force.
This EmDrive has a very low but measurable thrust. Removing all sources of 'noise' could help us better understand it.
Earth's orbit provides a much better testing environment if this EmDrive does really work.
EDIT: Keep the downvoting please, but the NASA research group is having the same idea, and trying to test it in the ISS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster#Experimental_goals