What is the Mach Effect thruster pushing on? What is the relative velocity of the Far-Off Active Mass? On Earth, if you drive a car you’re pushing on the ground to go faster, and it’s very efficient, but it’s not over-unity because the ground is at a set reference velocity and doesn’t move to help you along. But if an M-E thruster is pushing on distant matter, there’s no substantial difference between 0 km/s and 1 km/s, because the matter in the universe is flying all over the place. And it seems to me that in order to achieve a measurable thrust efficiency, an M-E thruster would have to preferentially interact with matter near its own velocity. Any way you slice it, the conditions seen by the thruster do not change markedly as the vehicle accelerates. In other words, the ground moves with the car.”
Paul March comment and observation
The Far Off Active Mass (FOAM) particles of the causally connected universe will have a Gaussian distribution spread in its kinetic energy magnitudes as a total population ranging from the very slow to just under light speed relative to the velocity vector of the accelerated vehicle in question. However the kinetic energy distribution maximum should peak like a black body radiator and since the background temperature of the universe is ~2.7K, there isn’t going to be a lot of fast moving ions to play with. However as you’ve speculated here, any M-E device operating at frequency X may resonantly couple with the cosmological Gaussian kinetic energy spectrum closest to itself. It just won’t be able to interact with all of it. The proof of this idea will of course have to come experimentally.
As to GoatGuy’s constant power/constant acceleration model, yes, it’s just a Newtonian closed system analysis that has to yield conservation of energy breaking results if all the developed kinetic energy of the local system is not supplied by the local power supply in the vehicle. However by pointing out that the electric or M-E motor’s back-EMF or its equivalent in the M-E developed by its accelerated frame of reference that’s what balances the energy books in this closed system, GoatGuy provided a service to all of us, IMO. However, he is still not willing to accept the possibility that through the use of the M-E wormhole term that we may have finally found a way to extract energy directly from the cosmological G/I field and its source, which is his privilege and right. It’s still up to Woodward and his followers to experimentally prove that the M-E is what it claims to be, and is the open-ended energy extraction system interested folks like to think about its many uses, if doable.
James Woodward comment
The reason why you need a local reaction mass in a Mach effect device is because it is the thing that is anchored in the distant matter that you push and pull off of. It plays the role of the earth in the accelerating car analogy. The thermal motion of distant matter doesn’t have anything to do with the effects I think.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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