I'm currently swapping my only pair of working AA's between my mouse and keyboard so please forgive that my answers here are short. 93143 seems to have answered most of your questions already.
. . .so there is change in chemical bonds energy, but that does not equate to change in energy density in the bulk, this is just a different form of energy (from chemical to kinetic and reverse, millions times a second).
Energy density is a measure of the material's properties. We're actually most interested in the power density, since it is the change in internal energy over time. This is why Woodward chose perovskite ceramics such as BaTiO3, PZT and most recently PMN, since these have huge power densities. From the phenomenological standpoint however, we're really talking about internal energy of the material. It is as the internal energy changes in these materials while they are being accelerated with respect to the distant stars, that a mass fluctuation of Mach Effect will occur.
There is no net output or input flow of energy in such harmonic motion (putting aside the decay to thermal agitation). SR is not saying that one form of energy is heavier than another form in such closed system, it does say that it is the same.
As 93143 noted, the only closed system here necessarily includes the whole universe. When we keep this in mind we hesitate to speak of closed systems. The gravinertial flux that results from the gravitational interaction between all the universe's parts extends beyond any system we might describe that is short of the entire universe.
Visualizing a "gravinertial flux" won't help. I guess it is backed by equations of state in Woodward's book (?). "...that this flux can be made to flow in and out of matter under specific conditions" sounds to me like it would transfer all the "gains" that could be made in terms of "push heavy pull light" from one part of a closed system to another part of the same closed system, with no net thrust overall.
This is true, but what it means is there is no net thrust on the entire universe. The universe does however experience an increase in entropy, and global conservation of momentum as result of the increase in momentum in the thruster as it produces thrust.
Time delays seem irrelevant for transformation from chemical bonds energy to kinetic energy back and forth in a bulk, again my battery example (please comment the battery thing : right ? wrong ? irrelevant ? Why irrelevant since it's about conversion from chemical bond energies to kinetic energies in a bulk ?)
It's important to be more specific and look at capacitors being used rather than chemical batteries, since bonds are not being created and destroyed in the materials, but rather the existing bonds are being stretched like rubber bands. They're EM springs. I think the rest of your question here is answered both just above and by 93143.
Er, mmm, it (SR+GR) might not explain the origin of mass as deriving from more fundamental "entities", but it does speak a little bit about inertia, if anything else, from an effective point of view, that is it allows a number of predictions about how something will accelerate or not (relative to inertial frame, say, in deep flat space) given what it does with its mass_energy content (throwing some of it or not). Bernoulli, with all due respect, was not working on a fundamental (effective) theory of dynamics, unlike GR or Newtonian dynamics.
SR and GR are theories of gravity. Einstein deliberately chose to set inertia aside and not rely upon Mach's Principle. Had he and Mach not had their falling out, I think Einstein would have eventually come to the understanding that Dennis Sciama did, that not only are the two intertwined (just as electricity and magnetism are) but that one is the result of the other. It's unfortunate that Einstein was put off by Mach's refusal to accept SR, since had that not occurred we might have seen fantastically more productivity from the end of Einstein's career.
I'm not asking if such mainstream scientists could tell what it is supposed to do, I'm asking if they could give a prediction of what it will do from admitted frameworks. . .
There is no way to make sense of M-E theory without admitting Mach's Principle. If you don't start with the notion that inertia is the result of gravity, you can't have a working theory of inertia and then expect to manipulate it. Anytime anyone tries to make sense of Woodward's work without first accepting Mach's Principle, they will necessarily come up with gibberish. This is in fact why Woodward named the mass fluctuation a "Mach Effect", because it relies upon Mach's Principle that inertia is the result of gravity.
If such Mach theory is compatible with SR, it will predict the same thing as SR in the same situation where SR does predict.
But SR doesn't make predictions about mass fluctuations, since it is not inherently a theory of inertia. Bernoulli's Principle concerns inertia, but it is not a theory of inertia, so it does not make inertial predictions per se.
. . .for your average engineer knowing scientists, this is still beyond belief that a well put, reproducible proof of science, below 1000k$ could remain so widely ignored. . .
There are many reasons for this. First off, it requires a great deal of time and effort to understand what Woodward is saying and most people won't invest that time. Out of those who will, only some will ever obtain a decent level of understanding of it. My understanding is not nearly as good as I'd like and I've been doing this for almost a decade now, but I am not an engineer and given the proper effort, most engineers can obtain a better understanding than I have. Note though, they are never going to understand this like a physicist will, since they don't have the proper tools for this. There are always exceptions but these are rare. Dr. Rodal has made it his habit to regularly surprise me in his understandings. He could likley understand much, much more than most engineers and perhaps even some PhD physicists who already have training in GR. But the point remains that although one would expect interest to drive understanding, this is always limited by one's skill set and the investment they're willing to make. Just the experimental setup takes many hours to understand. Just availing oneself to how Woodward has isolated from all the various multitude of spurious sources that can and do occur, and see that they're dealt with appropriately, takes an enormous amount of time. And what you're left with is not "proof" in the strictest sense. Remember that although we speak of "proof of science", what we are really talking about is disproving the alternatives to the thing we seek. Science never proves anything. I say this all the time and people hear it and go right along pretending the opposite. You need to keep this in mind: science never proves anything. Never. Not under a single condition does science ever prove anything. All it can do is disprove alternatives. This is a necessary limitation to all real science.
And finally the limitation here is that of the setup. There is no way to do this with $100k. Just paying the proper person to do this sort of investigation costs much more than this. If we were to build a lab, and characterize a new balance, that would take about a year. Someone with the proper skill set to act as Principle Investigator for such a thing, such as Dr. Rodal, makes about $200-250k/year. How then are you going to have a professional replication for $100k? You're not. The only reason Woodward is able to get the work done at all, is he is retired and works for free. That is not legal once there is funding of any type. In fact the law here in the US REQUIRES that everyone involved gets paid. It is not legal to work for free except on your hobbies. I'm currently trying to start a startup to do this work in the lab and my best figure at this time is it will take $3M to build the lab, the thruster and the power system. I am trying to bring the price down, since the more we need to do this the harder it will be to raise the funding, but for a professional test, one needs to start with the professionals and they are worth their wage. You can't do this without a PhD leading the work and all of the people with these kinds of sheepskins are worth big money. Guys like Bruce Long and Duncan Cummins make $250k/year and I can't ask them to wrk for less, unless of course they are willing to take an equity share in the startup. That is certainly an option. But really engineers don't want to carry so much risk. They want to be paid and then gain an additional piece of the equity, which is more along the lines of what we're expecting. Investors are those who manage the most risk and obtain the largest returns if they hit paydirt.
. . .one spectacular demo would lend less credibility to the tech than spreading a reproducible design of proof of science that barely moves a dust, but does so consistently and beyond doubt. But I'm not in this business, so maybe wrong.
No, you're right. What one really wants is reproduction at several places but reproductions cost money and in science one does not have control over what others do. That sort of control can only be had through funding the replications and when you do this they're no longer independent in the way necessary to meet the veracity test. So what one is left with is at best trying to meet the validation criteria without reproduction, which means you need to design a kit you can take to various other labs and have tested cheaply, in order to get validation without replication costs. This is what we intend to do, and hopefully NASA will let us stick our kit on the various balances at the various centers, but whether they do or not, if we have a commercial grade effect, we can press forward with commercial application.