Read on Twitter
Scoop: A NASA-funded team of scientists working on an engine for an interstellar spacecraft believes they’ve had a breakthrough in propellantless propulsion. https://www.wired.com/story/mach-effect-thrusters-interstellar-travel/
If they’re right, it could lower the amount of time it takes to reach the nearest stars from millennia to decades. It could enable an interstellar mission within a human lifetime.
Jim Woodward has been working on “Mach effect drives” for nearly 30 years. They’re based on his unorthodox interpretation of general relativity that says inertia is the result of the gravitational influence of everything in the universe.
Most theoretical physicists don’t think Woodward’s theory of inertia is correct. But if it is, his Mach effect thruster should work. Instead of using propellant like a traditional engine, it would hitch a ride on gravity itself.
Woodward’s Mach effect thrusters don’t look like much. They’re a stack of piezoelectric disks—which you’re familiar with if you’ve ever used the igniter on a grill—sandwiched between two blocks of metal.
So what does it look like to generate propellantless thrust? It looks like that little lurch you see in the GIF below. The device is only moving forward 0.5mm, but that’s 2-3 orders of magnitude more than what it was doing before.
Woodward and his collaborators believe their Mach effect thruster is generating upward of 100 micronewtons. It might not sound like a lot, but a few of those on an array is enough to maneuver a small sat.
And if you combined them in the hundreds or thousands, they could conceivably send you to the stars. Woodward and his team designed a conceptual interstellar spacecraft that uses Mach effect thrusters for their NASA grant.
It looks like this:
It looks like this:
But first, Woodward needs to confirm that what he’s seeing is real. A lot of scientists think it might be vibrational artifacts that only make it appear that thrust is being generated. The results will be verified at independent labs.
If Woodward is right, he may have set us on the path to crewed interstellar flight. If he’s wrong, he may have spent his career chasing vibrations. But if we ever want to see an alien sunrise we need more high-risk/high-reward science.
Anyway, heres a profile of a would-be Flamenco guitarist turned physicist who once saw an extraterrestrial spacecraft and has spent his life trying to replicate its propulsion technology: https://www.wired.com/story/mach-effect-thrusters-interstellar-travel/
