AIAA News on Woodward drive

The AIAA publishes a free newsletter and the January 2007 Issue contains a fascinating article on the implications of a working Mach-Lorentz Thruster, a concept based on Prof. James Woodward’s work on the cause of inertia. Ernst Mach, over a century ago, proposed that inertia is caused by the influence of the rest of the Universe on an accelerating mass. Woodward managed to put this concept into equations consistent with General Relativity – basically inertia is the gravitational analogue of electromagnetic back-reaction, which is quite well known and related to John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of Quantum mechanics.

By cleverly exploiting the finite time of back-reaction a propellantless thruster effect can be generated – which Woodward has claimed to have observed experimentally. The article’s author, Paul March, describes a 25 ton MLT propelled vehicle powered by fuel cells able to fly to the Moon in just 2.5 hours at 2 gee. Without the need for aerobraking such a shuttle could have a turn-around as little as an hour. Four trips to the Moon a day, two tons of cargo each time, could deliver 2,920 tons a year – and that’s just one shuttle. Coupled to a more enduring power-source a vehicle could accelerate to near-lightspeed in less than a year at 1 gee… but there’s more than a few places to go in the Solar System before we brave that voyage.