{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2007",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2007,
    "subject": "stl collection new item",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-12-02T13:00:38+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-02T13:00:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0580@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-02T13:00:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) stl collection new item",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": " . . . which reminds me: I collect slower-than-light stardrives.  I\nrecently ran into something I haven't seen before, and I'll post a few\nnotes about it in the hopes that someone else has seen its ilk before.\n\n(And yes, I am aware of the internet list of ftl/stl drives--it is a fine\nand wonderful thing, yet last time I looked, this one wasn't there; and it\nhad been years since the list had been updated or ammended.)\n\nIn this book, published in the late 80s, the starships use a \"two stage\"\nstardrive (but the stages aren't jettisoned, as you will see): the first\nstage fuses deutirium and creates an energy plasma exhaust; the second\nstage adds (presumably \"small\" if not \"minute\" amounts of) antimatter to\nthe plasma, thereby enriching the plasma so that the vehicle can reach 90%\nlightspeed.\n\nI get the first stage (pretty standard stuff); it is the process of the\nsecond stage that I have never seen before, and I can't quite grasp how it\nis supposed to work.  (Nevermind the usual mass ratio problems!)\n\nHas anybody seen any scientific speculation on such an odd device?  That is\nto say, I'm wondering if a Bussard-type wrote this up and it was used by\nthe author; or if another sf author used it somewhere else beforehand; or\nif the author dreamed it up him/her self.\n\nThank you for your indulgence!\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}