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A comment on The Plasma Magnet Drive: A Simple, Cheap Drive for the Solar System and Beyond. Parent comment

Re:The Plasma Magnet Drive: A Simple, Cheap Drive for the So... by mLuby on Thursday January 11, 2018 @10:56AM (#16124885)
As I understand it, that's because the field is spherical. If you place a sphere in a river it can only go straight downstream. However if you combine two or more spheres in a line and angle that line with respect to the flow, it's possible to move diagonally downstream to reach either shore.
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Re:The Plasma Magnet Drive: A Simple, Cheap Drive for the So... by ethbro on Thursday January 11, 2018 @05:30PM (#16128675)
True, but the magnitude of any locally-tangential component to a spacecraft would be relative to the angular difference in the spheres' locations, relative to the nearest star. No?

Which is to say, impractical for any substantial radius from the solar system's center.

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Re:The Plasma Magnet Drive: A Simple, Cheap Drive for the So... by mLuby on Friday January 12, 2018 @12:02PM (#16134312)
Right, it wouldn't exactly turn on a dime. :D Still, being able to turn at all dramatically increases the usefulness of the drive.
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