## Call me unimpressed.

NASA did not "validate" this "impossible" space drive.

First off, this was a [conference paper](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052), not a peer reviewed scientific journal paper. Even if the results had been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, I would still not call it "validation." The peer reviewed literature is where science starts, not ends. To be "validated", the results would have to be widely replicated elsewhere.

But let's dig deeper. From the conference paper,

> Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the “null” test article).

This supposed <strike>EmDrive</strike> Cannae Drive<sup>a</sup> is a highly extraordinary claim; it violates conservation of momentum. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The authors can't even reject the null hypothesis. That's not extraordinary evidence. It's more along the lines of "Move along, move along, there's nothing to see".

**Footnote**:  
<sup>a</sup> The article being tested apparently is not Shawyer's EmDrive. It is a different device, Guido Fetta's Cannae Drive, which uses the "quantum vacuum virtual plasma" (whatever that is) as the means for obtaining thrust.

It's the media that made the connection to the EmDrive. That connection is nowhere to be found in the conference papers by White et al. or by Fetta. In particular, [Fetta's patent](http://www.google.com/patents/US20140013724) claims no prior art, which must mean it is somehow distinctly different from Shawyer's EmDrive, at least in the eyes of the patent office.