caitmackenzie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Thoughts I had during a boring afternoon in work: If you can
> manipulate gravity, does that automatically give you an inertia-less
> drive? I'm kind of imagining creating a gravity well in front of your
> spaceship and falling into it, but wouldn't that be like pulling
> yourself along by your shoelaces?
Yep, that's why the idea can't work. If you have to bring it along with
you, then you're "holding" it, so Newton's third law applies and any
force it applies to you via gravitation will result in an equal and
opposite force on it from you, for the purposes of holding it still.
The only way to get around this is to "let go" of the gravity well, but
that potentially creates other problems. Presumably this would result
in a constant displacement (in otherwise empty space) per "drop," so you
in effect have some sort of impulse drive. Then, of course, the
question becomes how you're creating the gravity well and what
properties it has. Presumably, regardless of how you're doing it, the
gravity wells you're creating have some amount of inherent energy that
you're supplying, some of which is imparted to the ship, and some
momentum, which is resulting in Newton's third law resulting in thrust.
So it's basically a normal reaction drive; you're just using exotic
particles for the thrust.
--
Erik Max Francis && max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
&& http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
Maybe soul mates exist / After all
-- Des'ree
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