On 06-Sep-20 11:50 pm, Alain Fournier wrote:
On Sep/6/2020 at 02:14, wrote :
Gravity, Gizmos, and a Grand Theory of Interstellar Travel:

"Woodward’s MEGA drive is different. Instead of propellant, it relies on
electricity, which in space would come from solar panels or a nuclear
reactor. His
insight was to use a stack of piezoelectric crystals and some
controversial—but he
believes plausible—physics to generate thrust. The stack of crystals,
which store
tiny amounts of energy, vibrates tens of thousands of times per second
when zapped
with electric current. Some of the vibrational frequencies harmonize
as they roll
through the device, and when the oscillations sync up in just the
right way, the
small drive lurches forward."

See:

https://www.wired.com/story/mach-eff...tellar-travel/


What are the odds of this actually working?


From the link you provided:
“I'd say there's between a 1-in-10 and 1-in-10,000,000 chance that it’s
real, and probably toward the higher end of that spectrum,” says McDonald.

Yeah, 1 in 10,000,000 seems about right to me.

Woodward is following a path a little similar to that of calmagorod with
his NNP. He doesn't give equations of how much thrust his device should
produce. He does experiments and gets results that are most of the time
close to measurement errors, when some other folks try to redo the same
experiments they usually get less thrust. That all looks much like
artifacts. But then, again from the linked you provided:
“But imagine that one chance; that would be amazing."


Alain Fournier

It all seems to involve highly speculative theory. At this stage, it
would make more sense to try to design experiments sensitive enough to
detect the effect, than to try to design working thrusters using it.

Sylvia.