Re:EmDrive study officially published
by cperciva on Saturday November 19, 2016 @06:31PM
(#12996332)
Ambient temperature is a red herring; the sun is hotter than the ambient temperature so you can always win by absorbing energy from the sun and then emitting it to the rest of space.
if you have an efficient insulator, you could absorb an arbitrarily large amount of heat at the perigee, and retain it for the remainder of the orbit.
if you were in a circular orbit, you'd only be able to absorb up to the ambient temp.