Path: news.wco.com!hsnx.wco.com!miwok!bdt.com!rmstar.efi.com!nntp-hub.barrnet.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!lerc.nasa.gov!lerc.nasa.gov!glandis.lerc.nasa.gov!geoffrey.landis From: Geoffrey A. Landis Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Star Drives - Catalogs Date: 9 Sep 1996 13:35:35 GMT Organization: Ohio Aerospace Institute at NASA Lewis Research Center Lines: 34 Distribution: world Message-ID: <5116f7$o3@sulawesi.lerc.nasa.gov> References: <322DD89B.A0B@compuserve.com> <323251B4.2115@access.digex.net> <50v4kj$csr@dec.cuug.ab.ca> <50v5kb$a7l@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: glandis.lerc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Nuntius 2.0.4_68K X-XXMessage-ID: X-XXDate: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 08:36:32 GMT Odder star-drives: The time-travel drive (a): you move from A to B at a speed nearly, but just slower, than light. When you get to B, you just time-travel back to the instant you left A, resulting in a net transit time of zero. (b) You have a time machine that moves in time but not in space. Since the Earth and the sun move, all you have to do is travel to such a time when a desirable planet is, er, was/will-be, where the Earth is now. and a variant, the alternate-worlds travel drive: (c) travel to an alternate universe where the planet you want to go to occupies the space that the Earth occupies in this Universe. There's Catherine Asaro's complex-space starflight: You can't go past the speed of light, because the factor 1/SQRT(1-v^2/c^2) goes to infinity. However, you can detour *around* the speed of light by simply acquiring an imaginary component to speed, v= v(real) + ai And the quantum mechanics stardrive: Perfectly measure your velocity with a precision of delta-p. Then your position becomes uncertain, you could be anywhere within a distance x=hbar/delta-p. Look around you and figure out where you are [but *not* with quantum precision this time, please!]. If it's not where you want to be, try again. Last, and finally, there's the metaphysical travel approach: Die on the planet you wish to leave. Reincarnate on the planet you wish to go to. ____________________________________________ Geoffrey A. Landis, Ohio Aerospace Institute at NASA Lewis Research Center physicist and part-time science fiction writer