NASA Paper Measuring Thrust from EmDrive Replication Has Leaked (Update: Paper Now Peer-Reviewed, Published in Journal of Propulsion and Power)

UPDATE (Nov 20, 2016):

The paper referenced below has now been published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power which is a publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A link to the article is here: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120

I haven’t compared the two articles carefully side-by-side, but on a quick review the text looks to be very similar to the leaked article referenced below, with additional graphics and photos included.

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There’s an article on the ScienceAlert.com website that provides a link to an apparently leaked copy of a paper by a team from the NASA Johnson Space Center reporting on their testing of an EmDrive-like module. The EmDrive inventor, Roger Shawyer, claims his invention can produce thrust without any fuel or propulsion — something many people consider to be impossible based on Newton’s Third law — rather that thrust is produced by the movement of microwave phonons being bounced around the interior of a cone-shaped metal body.

The title of the paper is “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust in a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum” and the authors are Harold White, Paul March, James Lawrence, Jerry Vera, Andre Sylvester, Davis Brady and Paul Bailey. They had previously announced that this paper would be published in a peer-reviewed journal, probably in December of this year. A link to the paper is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7kgKijo-p0ibm94VUY0TVktQlU/view

The key finding in the paper is describes by the authors in the conclusion: “”The test campaign included a null thrust test effort to identify any mundane sources of impulsive thrust, however none were identified. “Thrust data from forward, reverse, and null suggests that the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 ± 0.1 mN/kW [millinewtons per kilowatt]”

They state they did not try to optimise the thrust in their device since this was more of a proof-of-concept experiment. In comparing this experimental device to other propulsion methods, they state that it is an order of magnitude lower than current Hall thrusters, and an order of magnitude higher than light sails, laser propulsion and photon rockets.