Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) Drive / Mach Effect Thruster (MET) | [Impossible Inventions]

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For millennia, skygazers have imagined what it might be like to wander among the stars. Long considered a quixotic pipe dream, interstellar travel is now taking shape as a quantifiable engineering challenge for space scientists around the world.

James Woodward, a professor at California State University, Fullerton and the author of Making Starships and Stargates, pioneered the concept of a drive powered by the Mach effect, an endeavor that has interested scientists and casual space nerds worldwide.

The idea is to use an electrostrictive transducer to convert the effect's predicted mass fluctuations into thrust. This would create a propellantless engine, one of the holy grails of propulsion.

In place of traditional spacecraft fuel, this Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive would rely on the gravitational field of the universe to keep it in motion, according to physicist Heidi Fearn, one of the proposal's co-investigators (the other co-investigators are José Rodal, Marshall Eubanks, Paul March, Bruce Long, and Gary Hudson, based at the Space Studies Institute in Mojave, California).