[Europan Ocean (OP)]

If a pilot or astronaut is positioned in front of an EM Drive, when the engine is on, what effect will this have on the pilot or astronaut?

[alancalverd]

Acceleration. Though probably not much of it. Thee's an interesting idea going around about an atmospheric ion drive, however.

[Europan Ocean (OP)]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11769030/Impossible-rocket-drive-works-and-could-get-to-Moon-in-four-hours.html

My concern is based on the subatomic particles that appear and disappear in front of the drive, mentioned at the end of the article.

[alancalverd]

Presumably there is some kind of microwave oscillator at one end of the gadget, and the gizmo is not symmetrical, so there will be asymmetric heating, producing spurious thrust in a partial vacuum in the same way as the Crookes Radiometer, and this thrust will persist after the power is disconnected, until the machine cools down - exactly as seen.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer

As for getting to the moon in 4 hours, remember s = ut + ½at², so to cover 120,000 miles in 2 hours (then you can slow down again to land) you need to accelerate for 2 hours at 60,000 mph per hour = 2750g, about 100 times the maximum tolerable for a few seconds.

[Janus]

Presumably there is some kind of microwave oscillator at one end of the gadget, and the gizmo is not symmetrical, so there will be asymmetric heating, producing spurious thrust in a partial vacuum in the same way as the Crookes Radiometer, and this thrust will persist after the power is disconnected, until the machine cools down - exactly as seen.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer

As for getting to the moon in 4 hours, remember s = ut + ½at², so to cover 120,000 miles in 2 hours (then you can slow down again to land) you need to accelerate for 2 hours at 60,000 mph per hour = 2750g, about 100 times the maximum tolerable for a few seconds.

distance to moon = 384,000,000 m
Half of that = 194,000,000,m
s = at^2/2

so a = 2s/t^2 = 2(194,000,000)/7200^2 = 7.4 m/s^2

or ~75% of 1g.

60,000 mph/hr sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
Even a slower car can accelerate to 60 mph in 10 sec.   1 hr is 360 time longer, so if it could accelerate for a full hour, it could reach 60 x 360 = 21,600 mph. In other words, it would be accelerating at 21,600 mph/hr.
at 5280 ft to a mile and 3600 sec to the hr , 60 mph is 88 ft/sec.  Over ten seconds this works out to an acceleration of 8.8 ft/sec/sec or 0.275g (using g= 32ft/sec/sec). 

[Bored chemist]

If a pilot or astronaut is positioned in front of an EM Drive, when the engine is on, what effect will this have on the pilot or astronaut?

If anyone ever makes an EM drive, we may be able to find out.