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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Etheric Propulsion-Vibrations | ||
| Faster-than-light travel. |
| It was in a wild longing for new adventure that the three had left in their new cruiser of revolutionary design. Wearied by the boredom of the solar system’s tame interplanetary traffic, they had started toward the hitherto unreached stars on a voyage of discovery and adventure. Their cruiser, driven by etheric propulsion-vibrations which it projected behind it, could attain speeds many times the speed of light itself. It had super-concentrated supplies and almost inexhaustible power, and thus the three could expect in it to visit the universe’s greatest stars. Now the first goal of their voyage, the nearest star, was in sight, as they gazed toward Alpha Centauri and its attendant planets. |
| Technovelgy from The Star-Roamers,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Weird Tales in 1933 Additional resources -
|
It's not really clear whether they are proceeding through normal space, or some sort of hyperspace. Whatever kind of space it is, it's very similar to guiding a boat through the water:
The cruiser heeled dizzily in space as it answered the wheel. Crisscrossing gas-globes hurtled through space where it had just been, and as one of these globes of gas touched a darting oval ship that was too slow in escaping its path, March saw the ship crumbled to fragments by the globe of gas! As he swerved the cruiser with instinctive swiftness, he heard a ay from Newell, another from Connor.
Given the speeds of sfnal space ships, any attempt to maneuver them would put unbearable forces on anyone inside unless inertia were somehow canceled. I can't think of another instance in sf that putting the wheel over results in the space ship "heeling" as a boat would do in the water.
Compare to these propulsion systems: Light Pressure Propulsion (1867),
apergy (1880),
Beam-Powered Propulsion (1931),
Granton motor (1933),
Vibration-Propelled Cruiser (1928),
geodynes (1936),
ion drive (1947),
Planetary Propulsion-Blasts (1934),
stardrive (1953),
solar sail (light sail) (1962),
Lyle drive (1961),
laser cannon (1966),
Bussard ramjet (1976),
asymptotic drive (1976),
Interstellar Laser Propulsion System (1985).
Space about them was suddenly alive with strange, dark oval ships! March, even as he whirled over the cruiser’s wheel in answer to Newell's startled cry of warning, was aware that from the rushing ships small globular clouds of white gas were speeding toward them! The scores of oval ships were attacking them!
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