Actually it is a useful thought experiment because it cuts to the heart of the problem. You 'temporarily' reduce the effective mass of something. So understanding how that is, or is not, possible lets you follow the rest of his reasoning. (on the record, I'm not sure I buy the variable mass argument).
That said, and I've suggested this before. The minimally sized mechanism is well within the mass capacity as a 'ride along' on a Space-X resupply flight to the ISS. Put it up in orbit and have it move itself to Geosyncrhronous orbit without fuel. Nobody would argue about the physics after that.
If that orbital transfer took a long time, someone would argue it's interacting with the Earth's magnetic field.
The only real absolutely unambiguous test I can think of -- other than finding a way to massively boost the effect to the point of undeniability -- would be to launch something at Earth-Moon escape velocity and then see if it can continue to accelerate as long as it's got solar power to do so. For a small test rig this could be done with a small SRB booster from the ISS.
... though on second thought ... I wonder what would happen if you put one of these on a centrifuge? It should spin faster, and faster, and faster... or not. :)
If the effect is too small to overcome friction you could do an experimental / control setup with two centrifuges, one with this device + a normal motor and one with only a normal motor and a ballast of equal mass to the device. Then swap which centrifuge has the device. Repeat many times. The one with the device should consistently accelerate more.
The heat problem sounds like they need to be using superconductors or some means of high-efficiency cooling. I'd look into Peltier effect cooling built into the device or something if superconductivity isn't an option.
reducing the mass of something by relativistic acceleration is easy, especially if that something is electrons. Keeping in mind that magnetism itself is exactly a relativistic effect of reducing the charge density of electrons.
Although such an effect should be about 10^-35 of "what you could get from electromagnetism".
I know about increasing the mass of something dew to relativity, but I never heard of decreasing the mass of an object.
To increase the mass you need energy, to get the energy you have to decrease the mass of another part of the ship (the nuclear reactor or the battery), so the total mass doesn't change.
don't really know what the power requirements are for his device as it currently stands. generating enough power in space would probably weigh enough to make the effects of the current device they've built all but unnoticeable over a reasonable amount of time. if they can advance their modeling of the effect and figure out what effects efficiency they'd likely be able to design and launch a device that could deliver much more convincing results.
That said, and I've suggested this before. The minimally sized mechanism is well within the mass capacity as a 'ride along' on a Space-X resupply flight to the ISS. Put it up in orbit and have it move itself to Geosyncrhronous orbit without fuel. Nobody would argue about the physics after that.