inter stellar propulsion

[Alex]

Just a thought so I don't need heaps of "HUMFFs"

Imagine a surfer on the ocean sitting. He's just going up and down and in what ever directions smaller than the waves effect.
We think light is a wave and may be a particle.
What if we had a light frequency generator controlled by enough comping power to stay just that tiny bit infront of phase of the EMF going in your direction.

You wouldn't just be surfing that wave, you'd be hitching a 42.

Think. Have you ever been in a big wave in the ocean? When you start in the ocean and are picked up by one, there is no feeling of acceleration, you are just moving at that speed.

It's the stopping that causes the problems. Usually something to do with the OUCH factor.

Ye Ye.. You'd have to be vibrating at the 'light' frequency to be able to be picked up to start with.
There are heaps of thing vibrate faster than light.
So you'd need a travel box of elements, and sub elements if you wanted any sort of accuracy.

Always wondered why a towel. Then what use is a towel but to pick up stuff. Box of elements.

Well that was fun for me. BUT

Think. Can 2 hydrogen atoms vibrate at the exact same frequency without setting up a wave?

Propulsion may not be about expending energy but tuning elements in a directional hyperbolic environment.
Speed of light becomes no more than a dial frequency.

BUT.. There is the OUCH factor.

[Malacandra]

There may be no feeling of acceleration, but I promise you that you are accelerating - and even removing a corresponding amount of momentum from the sea wave in the process. TANSTAAFL. Of course, a cubic metre of seawater weighs comfortably more than a tonne, so the ocean doesn't even notice you, but it's there anyway. And unfortunately, to accelerate to lightspeed in our frame of reference requires an infinite amount of energy. Photons don't accelerate -- they always exist only at lightspeed -- so the question doesn't arise for them.

For a further discussion of methods of interstellar propulsion not normally seen in the OOniverse, I can resort to a little self-publicising... see the fourth book in my signature.

[Diziet Sma]

There may be no feeling of acceleration, but I promise you that you are accelerating

Further to which, if you don't, at exactly the right moment, begin accelerating yourself in the correct direction, to at least a close approximation of the speed of the wave, it won't even "pick you up" and take you with it. As any surfer/body-surfer can tell you. This is why, to catch the really big waves, surfers need the help of someone towing them with a jetski, to accelerate them up to a fast enough speed that the wave will pick them up. Their arms alone can't provide enough acceleration. As Malacandra said, TANSTAAFL.