EmDrive: Advances in Spacecraft Thrusters and Propulsion Systems
Roger Shawyer
Summary and citation · read the original at the source · none found
In one page
Roger Shawyer has spent two decades on a single proposal, and this book is his full statement of it. An EmDrive is a closed, tapered microwave cavity: radio-frequency power goes in, the waves resonate inside a shape wider at one end than the other, and Shawyer’s derivation says the cavity should feel a net force along its axis. Nothing leaves the box. His own careful phrasing is the one worth keeping — the drive needs fuel but no propellant. It spends energy; it does not throw mass overboard. The book carries the derivation of the essential equations, full thruster design details, and the manufacture and test methods needed to reproduce the work correctly in a proper research facility, which is what turns an argument into something other people can check. He traces the line from the original UK government requirement through the sequence of devices he built and what each one measured, and introduces the parallel programmes in the United States and China.
Why it matters hereChapter 8 is about propulsion that carries no reaction mass, and this is the most complete published engineering statement of the idea by the person who started it — equations, geometry, materials, build and test method in one place. Chapter 1 gets something rarer: a design specific enough that two independent groups could aim instruments at it, and did. Read this sheet with the NASA Eagleworks measurement at /library/stm-a46c32725a and Martin Tajmar’s sub-nanonewton rebuild at /library/stm-0d21110734, and with Mike McCulloch’s parameter-free account of the same cavity at /library/stm-830d5d4620.
What it claims
01Electromagnetic drive is a proposed method of propulsion that does not require a propellant, although it still requires fuel — the distinction Shawyer keeps in front of the reader, because a thruster that spends energy without ejecting mass is a different machine from a rocket, not a better one.Publisher’s description of the book, third sentence
Designed, not yet built02The book provides a comprehensive description of the theoretical background of the technology, including the derivation of the essential equations on which the thrust prediction rests.Publisher’s description of the book, first sentence
Designed, not yet built03It also gives full thruster design details and describes the manufacture and the methods of testing that would enable the work to be correctly reproduced in the appropriate research facilities — a build-and-check specification rather than a position paper.Publisher’s description of the book, second sentence
Designed, not yet built04Shawyer traces the origin and subsequent development of the theory from the original UK government requirement, through contributions by many individuals and organisations, and covers the sequence of experimental devices in detail together with their test results; similar programmes in the United States and China are introduced.Publisher’s description of the book, sentences 5 to 7
On the bench now05The payoff Shawyer names is not confined to spaceflight: he presents the technology as holding the potential to change renewable energy production, clean and quiet transport, and global climate control.Publisher’s description of the book, fourth sentence
What to watch06What the measurements have found so far, stated plainly: a NASA Johnson Space Center team measured roughly 30 to 50 micronewtons from a radio-frequency cavity on a torsion pendulum in 2014 and reported that the force was not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon, while Martin Tajmar’s group at TU Dresden rebuilt the experiment in 2021 on a balance resolving below a nanonewton and found every reading inside the noise, at or below the plain light-pressure value. The regime neither campaign has reached is the one Shawyer himself points to — the superconducting cavity, where the quality factor rises by orders of magnitude.Brady and others, doi 10.2514/6.2014-4029, on this site at /library/stm-a46c32725a; Tajmar, Neunzig and Weikert, doi 10.1007/s12567-021-00385-1, Section 6, on this site at /library/stm-0d21110734
What to watch
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003456759RECORD CHECKED. This is Roger Shawyer’s own book, not a third-party study of his work: the Taylor and Francis page for the DOI resolves to EmDrive, Advances in Spacecraft Thrusters and Propulsion Systems, by Roger Shawyer, published by CRC Press in 2023, and Shawyer is the originator of the EmDrive and founder of Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd. The library’s fetched record carried the short form of the title, EmDrive; the full title is restored here. The print ISBN is 978-1-032-59900-7 and the ebook ISBN is 978-1-003-45675-9, read from the publisher’s own record and confirmed against Open Library. LICENCE. The book is sold by the publisher, carries no Creative Commons statement, and OpenAlex and Unpaywall both return oa_status closed, checked 2026-09-08, so no text of it is reproduced on this page. SOURCE. The summary and the claims were written from the publisher’s own description of the book, recovered from the OpenAlex record for the DOI, and from the two measurement campaigns held in this library, which are named in the claims: the NASA Eagleworks torsion-pendulum campaign at /library/stm-a46c32725a and Martin Tajmar’s SpaceDrive rebuild at /library/stm-0d21110734. Shawyer’s own 2015 and 2019 conference papers are separate works and are not this record.
How to cite it
Roger Shawyer (2023) EmDrive: Advances in Spacecraft Thrusters and Propulsion Systems. doi:10.1201/9781003456759
Where it sits in the curriculum
Inertial mass reduction and transmedium craftThe evidence ladder