Re: starship-design: Re: Mystery force tugs

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Ben Franchuk writes:
 > Steve VanDevender wrote:
 > > In any case, I'm wondering just what this ever had to do with
 > > starship-design's real purpose.  Despite clearly stating for years that
 > > this list is NOT for discussing speculative physics, some people just
 > > don't get it.
 > 
 > However Star-ship design does require 'New' ideas as
 > the old ideas like chemical rockets just don't work on a Galaxy Class
 > Starship. You are bound to have lots of speculative physics and technology
 > until somebody builds something.

There's a difference between speculative physics and speculative
technology.  We know that matter can reach relativistic speeds, although
we don't have the technology to make large objects do so.  We know that
antimatter exists, even though we don't have the technology to
manufacture and store large quantities of it.  It's possible to
characterize a technology to achieve something physically possible based
on those physical limits, even if we don't currently know how to build
that technology.  Conversely, there is nothing in our current
understanding of physics that suggests FTL transport of matter is
possible, and certainly no experimental demonstration of such a thing.