Marc Millis on Mach Effect Thruster, EmDrive Tests

Marc Millis spent the summer of 2017 at the Technische Universität Dresden, where he taught a class called Introduction to Interstellar Flight and Propulsion Physics, a course he would also teach at Purdue University last November. The former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and founding architect of the Tau Zero Foundation, Marc participated in the SpaceDrive project run by Martin Tajmar in Dresden, an effort that has been in the news with its laboratory testing of two controversial propulsion concepts: The Mach Effect Thruster and the EmDrive. Marc’s review comments on modeling for the former were almost as long as Tajmar’s draft paper. Described below, the SpaceDrive project is a wider effort that includes more than these two areas — neither the EmD or MET thruster had reached active test phase during the summer he was there — but the ongoing work on both occupies Millis in the essay that follows.