“Sure, but you gotta get out there first, and that’s always been our big problem. Shucks, we take all our big losses just breaking free of the Earth. After you get out there, you can get to Mars with an armload of jatos. Now, Henry, I ain’t no mathematician, but I know Einstein figgered out that gravity was something like electromagnetism. And Hlavaty checked him and proved the old boy wasn’t talking through his hat after all. The only trouble is, nobody’s figgered out a way to prove by experiment that the Generalized Field Equations are the basic law of the universe. Cantor and Gunther developed the math to handle it, and managed to tie matter-physics in with the space-physics of electromagnetism. That multi- and non-dimensional math looks like so many chicken tracks on paper to me, but from what I can get outa the abstracts maybe we can figure out a way to make gravity work for us—like the way electromagnetic fields do in an induction motor and a magnetron. And if gravity is something like a magnet yanking a chunk of steel to it the way Akahito thinks, maybe we can do like in an unduction motor when they throw another magnetic field in to oppose the first one.”
Enright had never managed to follow Einsteinian physics very well, since it was afield from rocketry, but he had remarked to O’Neil, “Bill, in order to do that, you’d have to have a gravity field stronger than the one that’s attracting you. It’ll take a lot of energy.”
“I know that. But we got plenty of energy sources.”
“And in order to overcome gravity, you’ve got to do work, apply a force to move your object a definite distance. Have you ever figured the work required to raise one pound of mass out of the Earth’s gravity field?”
“I ain’t never figgered it, Henry, but I guess it must be plenty. Got a slip stick?”
“Never mind computing it. It’s tremendous. And you’ve got to perform that much work and expend just as much energy whether you fire that object from a gun, push it with a rocket motor, or use some sort of force-field gimmick. You don’t get from here to Mars merely by thinking about it and writing an equation on a blackboard. If you could build an antigravity device, you’d never find a power source for it. Sure, we have a lot of potential available from the atom, but we’ve been trying to harness that to a propulsion system for years without success. The only thing we’ve got on hand that we can harness is chemical energy. And by using this chemical energy in its most efficient form, we’ve already developed an antigravity device.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. A rocket motor.”
“Sure, Henry, but it’s like using a steam-driven piston to fight a magnetic field. We ain’t meeting gravity on its own terms! So it takes a lot of power. But we’ve got big energy sources to tap. Maybe we’ll have to start with atomics and convert back and forth with chemical and mechanical energy three or four times to do it. But I think we can power an antigravity gadget if we sneak up on it the right way.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps you can provide enough energy. But have you the slightest idea what you’re going to sink it into? A lot of really high-powered brains have tangled with antigravity before. They failed. Do you think you can do it?”