Here, Wayne Throop <throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> Now, if you could manipulate the Higgs field, maybe....
> but even then, it'd seem likely that momentum would be conserved,
> so you'd still need some sort of reaction mass.
Science-fictional artificial gravity[*] is frequently ambiguous, if
not actually hostile, about conversation of energy and momentum. When
Spaceman Spiff sails into an open airlock and does that neat flip,
hitting the floor feet-first as he enters the ship's AG field, do the
engines register a quick power drain? Does the ship shift fractionally
upwards as Spiff falls twelve inches? So hard to tell, and I usually
figure the author hasn't thought about it.
[* As opposed to spin-gee, which is not science fictional even though
it's common in SF and has never been used in real-life space
travel[**]. Got it? Good.]
[** That's true, right? We've had plenty of spin-stabilized
spacecraft, but we've never spun a spacecraft for the purpose of
keeping a human against the floor. Never launched a big enough
spacecraft for that, I guess.]
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
*
Bush's biggest lie is his claim that it's okay to disagree with him. As
soon as
you *actually* disagree with him, he sadly explains that you're
undermining
America, that you're giving comfort to the enemy. That you need to be
silent.
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