Re: On reactionless drives

> From: [email removed]
>
> Bertil, I don''t think your idea solves anything. What sort of potential
> energy would such a device create? Engines, by definition, turn potential
> energy (the chemical or nuclear energy in the fuel, or electrical potential
> in a battery) into kinetic energy and waste heat. The fact that a drive
> is reactionless means that you make an object move without waste, in fact
> with the use of less chemical energy than the kinetic energy you require.
> Thus, you're creating energy out of nothing.

I think what Bertil was trying to say is, what is wrong with turning a ship
from having X megajoules of energy stored as potential energy, to a ship
having .9 X megajoules of kinetic energy and .1 X megajoules of waste energy
(e.g. heat) without having to dump a load of stuff out of the back to satisfy
Newton?  This doesn't create energy out of nothing, and doesn't violate
conservation of energy.  Having said that, see below.

>						My personal wish was that the
> folx at GDW and DGP had just left the maneuver drives as fusion torches,
> which follow reasonable laws and so forth. There have been mumblings to the
> effect of "Oh, they were *always* reactionless, we just made it official
> recently," from the designers, or so I've heard.

Let the mumblers take a look at some GDW drawings of starships.  The old
supplements 7 (Traders and Gunboats) and 9 (Fighting Ships - not to be confused
with the new one) have pictures of ships with exhaust nozzles.

All my models of ships (made back in Ye Olde Traveller days) still have exhaust
nozzles, which should tell you a bit about my faith in reactionless drives. :-)

- --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]