Overview

While I was attending high school, my science teacher who taught me Earth Science and Biology often mentioned far-out concepts. One that was particularly appealing to me and highly abstract for a 10 grader was the concept of negative drive. Accordingly, a spacecraft would accelerate at an increasing rate, perhaps with run-away exponentially increasing acceleration, in the ship frame. Now, as a seasoned theoretical starship propulsion physicist, several years ago, I realized that negative drive is perhaps workable in the future while also realizing how it could best be accomplished. The key here is electromagnetic negative refractive index pull sails. In theory, a powerful beam shinning on such a sail would pull the sail forward into the direction whence the beam originated. Traditionally, light always pushes object instead of pulling on them. However, a net pulling force has been observed in a laboratory setting due to the negative refraction of light alone. So, my concepts permit stellar or quasar orbiting spacecraft to accelerate at a rate in the ship frame that is proportional to the cube of the spacecraft gamma factor while maintaining a constant radius of revolution. For spacecraft using the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation to power up, the pull sail mechanism allows for acceleration in the spacecraft frame and thus time dilation and spacecraft kinetic energy to increase at a rate that scales with the fourth power of spacecraft gamma. Back then, I never would have thought that I would actually be working on negative drive concepts while in high-school. So, take a whimsical conceptual dive into the possibilities of using stars to attain almost light-speed by reading this book and seeing what I have to say on the subject.

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9781503121539

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