Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Ok, I see what you mean. (I don't like warp drive personally, it's a retrofitted
> contortion that, as you say, requires quite fine gravity control. 

Well, it's the one that actual scientists are actually talking about. :-)

> I rate it
> alongside star wars' hyperdrive to be honest. I was thinking of wormholes etc.)

Generally speaking, "hyperdrive" and "warp drive" tend to mean the same 
thing - going somewhere that the speed of light is faster. (Assuming it's 
explained at all.)

> whereas I've not heard of any engineering applications of the Higgs Boson yet!

Well, it depends what you can do with it! Higgs provides inertial mass, as I 
understand it, so it's really likely the basis of any "generated" gravity.

> Hmm, the 'manipulation of gravity' that I was thinking about wasn't any cleverer
> than piling big fat masses up in interesting ways - ever read any Stephen
> Baxter? 

The few I've read have been awful. :-)

And piling up big fat masses isn't gravity manipulation to achieve FTL 
travel? :-)

As an aside, I just got back from the bookstore and it seems they have no 
actual science fiction in their science fiction section. There was some 
heinlein and asimov and other dead authors, a whole shelf of star wars and 
star trek, another shelf of manga, and everything else was vampires and 
dragons.  Oh, except for the John Ringo type stories. (Many of which I'm not 
even sure why they're listed under Science Fiction, except the author also 
writes some science fiction.)  WTF guys? Haven't you written any actual 
science fiction in ten years? Is America so hopelessly stupid and luddite 
that nobody reads something with actual science in it?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message