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From: draughn@iitcs.UUCP (Mark Draughn)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL Techniques (masslessness)
Message-ID: <160@iitcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 03:44:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: iitcs.160
Posted: Wed Aug 28 03:44:43 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 21:28:13 EDT
References: <2900@topaz.ARPA> <825@ncoast.UUCP> <1086@ames.UUCP> <535@h-sc1.UUCP>
Reply-To: draughn@iitcs.UUCP (Mark draughn)
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Il.
Lines: 35

In article <535@h-sc1.UUCP> thau@h-sc1.UUCP (robert thau) writes:
>> First, you postulate anti-mass - not antimatter, but negative
>> mass. Its gravity pushes, and when it's combined with regular mass, you
>> get cancellation, nothing, no energy.
>> 	Anyway, you take approximately equal hunks of mass and anti-mass.
>> The mass is your spaceship, the anti-mass your "drive". Hook 'em together
>> (how?) (shut up, kid!), and the thing's inertialess (or nearly, depending
>> on how exactly you measure the mass and anti-mass), because the total
>> mass of the system's 0. It immediately flies off in the direction of
>> the mass-end of the system (the mass pulls the anti-mass, the anti-mass
>> pushes the mass) at a velocity approximating light.
>> 	Anybody seen any anti-mass lying around? :-)
>> 
>> -  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
>
>One other thing; you need to find Newton's third law and convince him
>to go on a coffee break.  ("The mass pulls the anti-mass, the anti-mass
>pushes the mass ...").

No no no.
It's massless, so we can make up all sorts of rubbish about it.
(I know that light is massless and we have strict rules about it; but
light is genuinely massless whereas this ship just looks massless.)
Anyway, we have here the makings of a great SF story because we can have
skillfully trained experts whose job it is to make sure that the mass and
anti-mass balance.  There would always be molecules subliming off into
space, or departing shuttles, or just energy radiating away that would
screw up the balance and our intrepid technicians would have to use the
mass-converter to balance the load before the compensators overloaded.
This would make a great space opera...
                                            -anonymous
                                            I'm hoping that people who want
                                            to flame me for wasting space with
                                            this drivel will be too lazy to
                                            look up at the heading for the path.