RE: starship-design: Genuine STR question

["L. Clayton Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

Yes, but he DID just create a neat little space warp with his flywheel!
(Ultradense ring of matter spinning at lightspeed - just fly through the
middle of the ring...)

Lee Parker

> The only way a flywheel could store enough energy to propel a
> starship at relativistic speeds would be for it to spin at
> relativistic speeds itself, and then it would have additional
> mass equivalent to the amount of energy it is storing.  There's
> no way you could build such a thing with normal materials; even
> neutronium won't hold together under such conditions.
>