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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Bussard Ramjet | ||
| Propulsion method that scoops hydrogen atoms from space via electromagnetic fields. |
Niven makes good use of this real-life invention in the novel. It is a propulsion method that scoops hydrogen atoms from space via electromagnetic fields, then directs them into a fusion chamber and expels them out the back for thrust.
The emissions of a ramscoop tend to be high-energy hydrogen and helium, lithium radicals, borates, and lithium hydride, producing a purplish flame.
The magnetic field of a Ramscoop is considered to be lethal to living organisms.
| The starships were Bussard ramjets. They caught interstellar hydrogen in immaterial nets of electromagnetic force, compressed and guided it into a ring of pinched force fields, and there burned it in fusion fire. Potenially there was no limit at all on the speed of a Bussard ramjet. The ships were enormously powerful, enormously complex, enormously expensive. |
| From A World Out of Time,
by Larry Niven. Published by Random House in 1976 Additional resources -
|
The Bussard ramjet design was originally proposed in 1960 by physicist Robert W. Bussard. Among the problems with the original design are
For a look at a propulsion system using a more tenuous fuel source, see light sail, from Sail 25, by Jack Vance.
Be sure to take a look at the entry for ram field, an extension on this idea from Niven's earlier novel Protector.
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