# Science Fiction propulsion **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 14, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435 "2011-06-14T15:01:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/21 "2011-06-14T19:10:01Z")
John Ringo goes into one technology in a fair bit of detail in his “_Legacy of the Aldenata_” series - Super-dense crystals, with the grains physically warped or stressed, then locked in place by stasis fields. Slowly allowing the crystals to re-orient releases the energy used to warp the grains in the first place. _How_ that released energy is converted to a useful form is glossed over, but the energy density was presented as being the equivalent of a rather large bomb. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/22 "2011-06-14T19:38:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Is that intended to be comedy/satire? My post certainly wasn’t, and so far as I could tell, neither were the original stories (though the fact that paint kept cropping up in them was, of course, something of a running joke). In the first story, they adjust the paint jobs, engine characteristics, etc. of several different ships to match exactly, as part of a bluff to the hostile aliens to make them think we have some sort of teleportation technology. In the second one, the protagonist is trapped in a warehouse with one of the aliens (a catlike predator), and escapes, in part, by spilling a bunch of noxious chemicals (including a barrel of paint) to overwhelm the alien’s sensitive sense of smell. I don’t remember any of the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/23 "2011-06-14T19:42:20Z")
> [@The\_Vorlon](#): > > Heinlein’s Shipstones. Shipstones weren’t really a revolutionary new power source, though; they were just extremely efficent and capacious electric batteries. it’s mentioned in, I think, _Friday_ that their invention made desert land extremely valuable as solar energy farms. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/24 "2011-06-14T19:57:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > My post certainly wasn’t, and so far as I could tell, neither were the original stories (though the fact that paint kept cropping up in them was, of course, something of a running joke). In the first story, they adjust the paint jobs, engine characteristics, etc. of several different ships to match exactly, as part of a bluff to the hostile aliens to make them think we have some sort of teleportation technology. In the second one, the protagonist is trapped in a warehouse with one of the aliens (a catlike predator), and escapes, in part, by spilling a bunch of noxious chemicals (including a barrel of paint) to overwhelm the alien’s sensitive sense of smell. I don’t remember any of the rest. Sorry, I didn’t mean your post, I meant the stories. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/25 "2011-06-14T20:12:08Z")
I recall some old _Analog_ story set in a future where the invention of some kind of electromagnetic levitation drive was killing auto racing. Electrically powered floating cars nearly silently going “swoosh-swoosh-swoosh” around a track just wasn’t as exciting as roaring engines. And adding noisemakers would have been too much of a fake. IIRC, in the end the protagonist found some technical excuse for powering racecars with old fashioned engines and all was well. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/26 "2011-06-14T20:32:33Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I recall some old _Analog_ story set in a future where the invention of some kind of electromagnetic levitation drive was killing auto racing. Electrically powered floating cars nearly silently going “swoosh-swoosh-swoosh” around a track just wasn’t as exciting as roaring engines. And adding noisemakers would have been too much of a fake. IIRC, in the end the protagonist found some technical excuse for powering racecars with old fashioned engines and all was well. 🙂 That reminds me of a German manufacturer (Mercedes? VW?) hybrid commercial. Two cars are given voices. The first describes his noices with the classic “vroom vroom”, and the hybrid just exhales loudly. My reaction was :dubious: , that’s supposed to be impressive? If a car is a penis analog, I pick “vroom vroom”. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![runcible\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@runcible\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runcible_spoon)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/27 "2011-06-14T21:29:05Z")
In Peter F. Hamilton’s Greg Mandel series, I believe electric vehicles are the standard, but at one point there’s an old Rolls or something equally classy - it’s been retrofitted with a device that uses a battery to produce gasoline from it’s exhaust, essentially making it an extremely wasteful (and therefore ostentatious) closed cycle. Also, I can’t recall the name of the series, but it’s set in a future where somebody built a bunch of satellites that will target any sufficiently advanced tech and shoot it, so they use a lot of human power - they have trains where all the cabins have pedals, and you get credit if you help pedal, or pay more if you don’t. Also some wind-powered trains, as I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/28 "2011-06-14T21:38:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > My post certainly wasn’t, and so far as I could tell, neither were the original stories (though the fact that paint kept cropping up in them was, of course, something of a running joke). In the first story, they adjust the paint jobs, engine characteristics, etc. of several different ships to match exactly, as part of a bluff to the hostile aliens to make them think we have some sort of teleportation technology. In the second one, the protagonist is trapped in a warehouse with one of the aliens (a catlike predator), and escapes, in part, by spilling a bunch of noxious chemicals (including a barrel of paint) to overwhelm the alien’s sensitive sense of smell. I don’t remember any of the rest. IIRC, in the first story the few ships he had were painted in different colours at different times with different engine frequencies to give the impression of a much larger fleet than he actually had (Paint was one thing he had in large supply).The ships landed in one colour, took off en masse, repainted behind a moon or something, and landed again. I believe the aliens were also particularly colour- conscious. The impression of teleportation was given by identical twins or triplets placed at various points in a large underground revolving set of rooms, so the alien visitors never knew exactly where they were. The illusion was augmented by masses of troops as honour guard exiting a small ground vehicle (with a hole in the floor leading to an underground chamber) As mentioned above, airships have been used as propulsion several times, including Arthur C Clarke’s _A Meeting With Medusa_ and Rudyard Kipling’s _As Easy as ABC_. Clarke’s _A Fall of Moondust_ features a dust- cruiser, a propeller driven boat like vehicle (also described as a Moon bus) which travels across a dust sea that is so fine it has many of the properties of a liquid. It is electrically powered. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/29 "2011-06-14T22:52:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Oh, and to the OP, Niven’s later _Known Space_ books (around the time of Gil Hamilton, I think) posit an Earth where fossil fuels are so tightly regulated that surface-to-orbit rockets are powered by air compressed nearly to the point of degeneracy. Personally, I’m not sure I buy that: It seems to me that it’d be easier to use whatever energy source you use to compress the air to instead manufacture proper rocket fuel (either by splitting water, or from atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub]), and then burn that: If you’re manufacturing the fuel from the stuff it burns into, then the whole process is carbon-neutral. Not to mention that air compressed almost to degeneracy pressure would certainly dissociate into its monatomic species and would likely undergo hydrogen and helium fusion under storage. Also, the propellant and its products could not be stored or fed using any conventional material, though of course reasonable material properties have never stopped Niven, regardless of how absurd they are. By the time you get to needing scrith, you might as well just start using cosmic discontinuities or sheets of stabilized Bose-Einstein condensates or other handwaving. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/30 "2011-06-14T23:47:37Z")
Clarke’s _Songs of Distant Earth_ features something called **Quantum drive** , which allows travel at 20% light speed. I forget the exact details as he explained it, but it involved some sort of “magic” of Planck-scale level properties of quantum physics and, I think, vacuum energy too. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2011, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435/31 "2011-06-15T15:11:33Z")
> [@runcible\_spoon](#): > > Also, I can’t recall the name of the series, but it’s set in a future where somebody built a bunch of satellites that will target any sufficiently advanced tech and shoot it, so they use a lot of human power - they have trains where all the cabins have pedals, and you get credit if you help pedal, or pay more if you don’t. Also some wind-powered trains, as I recall. S.M. Stirling uses that idea in some of the stories based in his “Dies the Fire” universe. Mind you, there are no orbital tech-suppression satelites. Only an overly-determined and finicky ‘god-force’ meddling to produce medieval technological conditions with modern knowledge. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-propulsion/585435.md?page=1)