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science is expensive, difficult, and most importantly does not guarantee the result you want. Thats why people turn to philosophy...
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It's actually closer to: "The EM Drive has been studied quickly and cheaply by multiple groups with inadequate funding, and to date no conclusive results have been produced either way."I'm guessing you don't mean it this way, but what you wrote could be read as saying, "Only rich people can do real science."
Also, what makes you say it was done "quickly and cheaply ... with inadequate funding"? I wouldn't know how to tell.
Firstly, isolating the test apparatus from EVERY factor that could affect the results and not be the result of the EM Drive producing thrust is really, really hard. And achieving really hard things is generally expensive.
Secondly, measuring EXTREMELY small amounts of thrust means extremely sensitive (and expensive) equipment, and exacerbates the issues with isolating the test results.
Those are the two main issues: What thrust has been measured is at the lowest end of what the instruments can read and could just be instrument error, and it given the sensitivity of the test its possible its just problems with the apparatus letting ambient conditions skew the results.
Again: Many of the tests were repeated with the same results as the EM Drive... with a cardboard box.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But the science hasn't categorically proved or disproved it at this point.
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Instead of trying to eliminate all of the error in teeny tiny measurements why don't they just build a really really big one and look for a larger measurement?
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Instead of trying to eliminate all of the error in teeny tiny measurements why don't they just build a really really big one and look for a larger measurement?
Because doing the needed isolation to verify the results, becomes even more cumbersome and expensive at scale. Nor should it be necessary to do so.
The major issue is that the results so far observed of the EMDrive are within the bounds of error measurement. There is no evidence that scaling up the experiment on the ground is going to yield any useful data for the money that would need to be spent. Nor is there any evidence to justify the expenditure of space-based trials.