A Nudge in One Direction

[krpalmer]

I started reading the August issue of Scientific American today, and got to an article about a NASA program that funds “research that would be ‘huge if true.’” The article focused on some scientists who had been given a grant to investigate “the Mach effect,” playing with inertia to create a push in one direction, with the intimation enough research and development could turn this into a full-blown spaceship drive. A part of me does want to be cautious about gee-whizzery, and going back to the article I did note cautions from other scientists. At the same time, though, I was thinking of a contraption plugged heavily in Astounding Science Fiction around when its editor was getting a reputation for promoting pathological science, which was supposed to turn rotational motion into a steady linear push but seemed in the end to only work when it was sitting on a tabletop. The thought of an “I told you so!” or two wasn’t encouraging in this case. As I thought about that, though, I started thinking that “inertia” being involved reminded me of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman novels, where the “inertialess drive” neatly sidestepped all the complications of relativity, limiting your super-streamlined starship’s top velocity only by friction with the interstellar media. For all the looking back at science fiction, though, I could contemplate the NASA program is looking forward right when we’re all looking back to Apollo 11.