Fixing Maneuver Drives...

W. Dow Reider says:
>Sounds like a reasonable explanation.  However, the problem isn't
>how the drive works, but what it does.  Reactionless drive (by any means)
>equals violation of conservation of energy.  There is no way around it - I
>tried to find one, and was finally able to prove that it was impossible.
>I used to have a lot of trouble with traveller's rather cavalier
>attitude towards physics, but I think an important distinction can be made.
Some of the physics violations are intentional, such as Jump drive,
>reactionless
>thrusters, etc.  These I am happy to accept as little black Physics
>Nullifier (tm)
>boxes attached to the relevant machinery, and are part of what makes the game
>fun.  However, a lot of the problems seem to be unintentional, such as the fact
>that you can get free energy out of a system consisting of TL15 fuel cells and
>a fuel purification plant.  Those I want to fix - it will help make the
>game more
>consistent.
>	Since some of the intentional violations will let you build perpetual
>motion machines, etc, my favorite explanation for why they don't work is
>a "nullifier interference field" generated by all those little black
>boxes...:-)

Re: newtonian violations...
	There's a neat explanation for how to get reactionless drives...
some work by one Robert L. Forward into negative matter shows that with
some negative-mass nearby you can move by interaction with the negative mass
but not using exhaust.  If you want to extrapolate those results into playing
with gravity i just bet that you can get away with reactionless drives.
	If anyone objects to the above i'll go pull Forwards paper and do it
the hard way 8-)

	Robert Dean thought that a straight thrust-based system would work
better... I agree, but pose a question: is it worth introducing incompatability
if we have means to remain compatable ?


	Other problems (like the one mentioned above) need real fixes.


- - -george william herbert
[email removed]        OCF Staff