An Idea...

Thank you Joe. Obviously, that is not the answer I really wanted to
hear but I will have to live with it I guess. Well, back to the
drawing board.

Patryk

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, joe@... wrote:
>
> On Dec 29, 2006, at 14:45 UTC, Patryk wrote:
>
> > Way back when, when I was in High School, one of our science
teachers
> > used to get these project catalogs for building classroom
projects.
> > One of those catalogs was titled, "Lasers, Phasers, and Ion Guns".
>
> I remember that one! Lots of fun stuff in it.
>
> > While thumbing through the book, I found project kits for a
tractor
> > beam. Which leads to my question: would it be possible to use such
> > things as tractor and repulsor fields/rays for lift and
propulsion?
>
> Alas, your science teacher did you a disservice. There are no such
> things as repulsor fields/rays nor tractor beams, except at the
> microscopic level where light can sometimes be used to exert a tiny
> force on microscopic objects (look up "optical tweezers").
>
> That catalog tended to be a bit sensationalistic, but if you read
the
> fine print you could usually find out what they really meant by the
> misleading titles. In this case, I'd guess you may have read the
fine
> print, but years later it's only the sensationalistic title that
stuck