GIThruster wrote:
You won't see me handeling actual numbers the way engineers love to. Rather, I analyze the issues without numbers. Most engineers would count that as guess work but it is really not.
RA Heinlein wrote:
What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
GIThruster wrote:
When I say this conservation issue arises because people don't understand GRT and that force is not relativistically invariant, I know what I mean and I hope my readers do too.
The point is, if you do the calculations in support of this seeming conservation violation for something as simple as a chemical thruster, you get the same absurd result that you get when you do them for an M-E thruster. What this means is, we really do need GRT to do the calculations properly and this should not be a surprise.
First, I tentatively agree that the 'over unity KE' issue appears to be a red herring. Doing the math that shows that at very much non-relativistic speeds makes it clear.
Second, GRT isn't really germane to the matter. For speeds under 1% c and tolerances of 2-3 significant figures, it can be ignored - unless you're subtracting A from B, and tight tolerances start to matter.
GIThruster wrote:
You cannot do these calculations properly without GRT.
Patently untrue for the calculations in question (KE at velocities far below the speed of light). For the theoretical underpinnings of the Mach Effect, I couldn't say. I'd expect it to be relevant there.
My interest is more in treating the Mach Effect drive as a black box: if I put X amount of power in, what happens? How precisely can that be shown? It sounds like Woodward's experiments are on the cusp of something interesting, and I do hope you continue to relay information on that..