Reactionless Drive: Difference between revisions
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For our purposes it is sufficient to define the drive as follows: "any form of propulsion not based around expulsion of fuel or reaction mass". In other words the drive will propel a vehicle, almost always a starship, without having to waste space carrying propellant. Sometimes authors will try to control these drives by requiring a power plant to make it keep working but more than a few will keep working forever.
Obviously this would be an awesome invention! So why don't we have them? Well, naively it would shatter the fundamental basis of all physics since [[Isaac Newton]], as detailed [https://web.archive.org/web/20120125115341/http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/reactionlessdrive.php here], and modern theories predict effects too small to be useful. Thoughtful [[Speculative Fiction]] writers have also noted that any sort of reactionless drive would provide those who possess it with an ''infinitely'' powerful weapon (compare [[Weaponized Exhaust]], which is the use of a reaction drive as a weapon). Note that this would not be a problem if they required truly massive amounts of power <ref>to accelerate at 1G a "photon drive" would need ~2.9TW per ton, not an easy task</ref> but many examples don't.
Some writers try to side step this potential danger by setting a maximum speed that the drive can go. Unfortunately while this eliminates the possibility of an infinitely powerful missile it still leaves the developer with an infinitely powerful energy source leaving the writer with most of the same problems. Other times, it may be limited to [[Higher-Tech Species]] or [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s who presumably have some scientific understanding beyond the ken of "lesser races".
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