starship-design: Linear EMP motor (name needs work)

[Connor <chithree@boo.net>]

The wave goes in the back, is deflected around a cartoonish number of times, and 
eventually finds it's way back out. Same thing with it entering through the skin. I'm not 
going to go through every individual bounce.
                                                                
I have another idea for interstelar propulsion. It probably isn't very energy efficient, but 
it's fuel free. By the way, if my public brainstorming is getting obtrusive, everyone just 
let me know. I can take it. Did I even use obtrusive right?

So once I was reading about an idea for propulsion, one where the sun and the earth were 
connected by a long aluminum bar. So the idea is, the sun emits an electromagnetic pulse 
for a minute, and it takes eight minutes to get to the earth. When it reaches it, the earth 
is pulled foreward in the pulse for a minute, and the whole structure moves foreward. This 
happens again and again, and the whole thing gets going pretty fast. By the way, this is 
hypothetical.

So this isn't really practicle for interstellar travel, because it's so big, and I don't think 
the sun does that :). But I was thinking that you could keep the apparatus in a big tube 
of liquid sodium. The speed of light in liquid Na is only 52 ft. Per second, so with a fancy 
computer it would probably only have to be 25 feet long. How does this sound to 
anybody?

Connor
chithree@boo.net