as the "Dean Drive" was to Newtonian physics. I thought the Dean Drive ended early in the primaries. YEARRRGH!!!!
Seriously, I never heard of the Dean Drive. Can you point me to a decent explanation?
Ah, the Dean Drive. The Dean Drive is a sort of hoary old chestnut, dating back quite some time, to the late '50's or so, IIRC. The nutshell version is that the Dean Drive purported to be a "reactionless" drive that worked by somehow converting rotational acceleration to linear acceleration. Nice, but around here we obey the law of conservation of angular momentum, young man ;)
Anyway, Jerry Pournelle has an interesting write-up of his experience with the Dean Drive here.