User:West London Dweller/Vacuum propeller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A vacuum propeller is currently (as of 2006) a fictional device that generates motion of a body in a vacuum without requiring reaction mass to be expended (as in a rocket).

If, hypothetically, vacuum were 'filled' with luminiferous æther, and a 'propeller' was able to work the æther in the same way a ship's propeller works seawater to generate motion, long distance space travel would be made considerably easier, as spacecraft would no longer need to carry reaction mass to expel.

There is no currently known technology that allows for vacuum propellers.

[edit] External links

• http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/vprop/

[edit] References

Taken from the fourmilab article:

Ciufolini, Ignazio and John Archibald Wheeler. Gravitation and Inertia . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-691-03323-4.

Zubrin, Robert. Entering Space . New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999. ISBN 0-87477-975-8.