Emdrives, in MY universe? Its more likely than you think.....

[Cain]

I keep reading this title as "Emodrives, in MY Universe?"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I keep reading this title as "Emodrives, in MY Universe?"

Powered by cutting themselves and crying.

[Cain]

Unfortunately as a side effect the decay of this energy source creates emo albums and poetry with exceptionally long half lives, which can pollute the environment.

[LMNO]

This gives a whole new meaning to "cutting the power".

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Though the resistence of an EMO unit is much lower than most materials, thus providing an overall energy gain as it doesn't take much energy to get through any number of EMO's.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Sort of kind of on topic, a friend who was into some project involving von neumann probes once asked me if I had any ideas for liftoff from asteroids/small planetoids. I came up with this off the top of my head, and I'm sure that it's probably total nonworking BS, but I'm not sure that it IS total nonworking BS.

You have two metal parabolic dishes, one on the top of the launch pad and one on the bottom of the 'ship'. They line up perfectly. You make an imperfect vacuum seal (assuming that there's some level of atmosphere), just enough to put stress on both dishes. The dish on the launch pad contains a powerful rare-earth magnet, and to create more stress, a powerful electromagnet is turned on on the bottom of the 'ship' with the polarity pulling it towards the pad. At a certain point, a spark gap is turned on (the hall effect, iirc, for a small amount of lift), and shortly afterwards, the polarity is suddenly reversed on the electromagnet, getting: 1) a push from the magnet, 2) a slingshot effect from the pressure of both dishes, and 3) the hall effect using ionization for maintaining some level of lift.

This wouldn't work on anything with no atmosphere. I don't plan to do the math to work out whether or not it would work anywhere in particular.