Alderson Drive
In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's, scifi novel The Mote in God's Eye, Alderson tramlines form between points of equipotential thermonuclear flux located near stars, although not all star pairs form Alderson tramlines. In order to travel between star systems, it is frequently necessary to carry out a series of Alderson jumps interspersed with periods of travel in normal space.
Travel between two Alderson points appears to take no elapsed time; similarly, when Alderson tramlines form, they appear to take no elapsed time to do so.
Alderson points are difficult to find. Only one tramline leads to Mote system. Its end in Mote system is well above the plane of the local ecliptic, and its outer end appears inside the corona of a gas giant. The Mote civilisations had long been able to construct an Alderson-type drive, but as they had no Langston field technology until the arrival in Mote system of the battlecruiser INSS Macarthur - which revealed to the Moties the possibility of such a device - their many attempts to use an Alderson drive always ended in failure, all ships which passed between the Alderson points being destroyed by the gas giant before any report could be made of the problem.
Referenced By
CoDominium | The Gripping Hand | The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye
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