Re: Alternative Propulsion

Won't the cat scratch the toast off of its back, get its paws covered in
butter and so land on its feet butter side down <groan>.
----
From: Kyle Klingler <kklinglr@freenet.columbus.oh.us>
To: Full Thrust Mailing List <FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk>
Date: 12 September 1997 10:50
Subject: Alternative Propulsion

After reading through all the discussion on FTL drives, I thought you
all
might like this humorous mail that was sent to me. :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
*  Kyle Klingler - kklinglr@freenet.columbus.oh.us  "I'm not dumb.   *
* I just have a command of thoroughly useless information."  Calvin  *
*   "I have the strength of madness."  Miaowara Shiro		     *

---------- Forwarded message ----------
THE SECRET OF ANTIGRAVITY...
----------------------------------

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor
butter-side down.  If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and
towering place, it will land on its feet.

But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a
cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its
feet?
Or will the butter splat on the ground?

------------------------------------------------------------

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be
able
to deduce the obvious result.

The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and
the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can
not
smash its furry back. If the combined construct were to land, nature
would
have no way to resolve this paradox.  Therefore it simply does not fall.

That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get),
you
have discovered the secret of antigravity!  A buttered cat will, when
released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and
butter repulsion are in equilibrium.  This equilibrium point can be
modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing
some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle
to drive their ships while within a planetary system.  The loud humming
heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several
hundred
tabbies.

The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the
bread
off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will
land
on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right
after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship
and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.

And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship using the
aforementioned anti-gravity device.

One could power a ship by means of cats held in suspended animation
(say,
about -190 degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs,
thus avoiding the possibility of collisions due to tempermental felines.
More importantly, how do you steer, once the cats are all held in
stasis?

I offer a modest proposal:

We all know that wearing a white shirt at an Italian restaurant is a
guaranteed way to take a trip to the laudromat.  Plaster the outside of
your
ship with white shirts.  Place four nozzles symmetrically around the
ship,
which is, of course, saucer shaped.  Fire tomato sauce out in proportion
to
the directions you want to go.	The ship, drawn by the shirts, will
automatically follow the sauce. If you use t-shirts, you won't go as
fast
as you would by using, say, expensive dress shirts.  This does not work
as
well in deep gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a
black hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter
force
of the anti-gravity cat/butter machine.  Your only hope at that point is
to
jettison enormous quantities of Tide.  This will create the well-known
Gravitational Tidal Force.