The fact that energy can be extracted from the battery to drive the microwave source is certainly possible. No one will ague against that point. The problem is that this energy can be depleted without having anything to show for its loss. If taken to the extreme most of the ship can be converted into energy by some nuclear process to supply power for the drive mechanism.
After the drive is shut down the ship stops accelerating and comes to rest in space. Even though the new velocity is different than the old one before the drive operates, a guy onboard the ship can not determine that he is moving. He will not have any kinetic energy relative to himself. He sees that his ships mass has depleted but has nothing to show where it went. With a normal drive the guy can see the exhaust that is moving relative to him which contains all of the converted energy. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Nov 24, 2014 12:02 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:They call me a moron. A reply. On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 8:26 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote: I encourage anyone out there with knowledge about how to overcome the obvious problems to offer their input. One thought here -- the "reactionless drive" that I am aware of being in the recent news is the EmDrive. That one involves the generation of microwaves and their reflection in a cavity. It's not clear whether anyone other than Nasa and the inventor believe that it works as advertised. But if it does, note that energy must be expended to generate the microwaves, e.g., by a battery, to which the usual E=mc^2 conversion will apply. Eric
