The ships are particle accelerators. So they are expelling mass at nearly lightspeed. There’s your propulsion, and that’s why the ship has to be kept tiny and light.
19 posted on 07/13/2009 11:12:42 AM PDT by LibWhacker
(America awake!)
If you expel a particle mass that weighs one microgram at the speed of light (no mean feat) its momentum would be 3x108 x 10-6 or 300 gr m/sec. A single pilot alone weighs about 75,000 grams so if he got all of the momentum to balance the expulsion his speed would increase less than half a millimeter per second. What am I missing?