[Spaceships] Real Life Non-Super Science Reactionless Engines

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That's a pretty bad analogy, though. They didn't say that the device worked when it was turned off.

If you made two lightbulbs, one with a filament material you had been told would work and one with a material you thought wouldn't work, and you measure light from both, do you conclude that the photometer must be broken?

You haven't shown that it isn't. If you are unable to find anything you can make the filament out of that does nothing, then yes that's a plausible conclusion (the other alternative is the filament doesn't actually have anything to do with the effect at all, take it out entirely and see what happens).

If you want to convince anybody you have tiny level of reactionless thrust you *must* be able to run the experiment with everything but some key element and get no thrust. If you can't, then by far the most reasonable conclusion is something about your experimental setup is causing your measurements to be wrong.

Incidentally since there is well known and incredibly cheap first order test for atmospheric interaction - wrap your pendulum in a clear plastic garbage bag, tie it around the suspension wire and see if the machine still works. You can safely assume that failure to report the result of that test indicates either the experimenters don't know what they are doing, or do know this will cause the device not to work and are running a fraud.