When I was stationed at the 5th Preventive Medicine Unit (PMU) in Korea, the unit barracks was a Quonset hut. The guy who stayed right in front of me was an avid reader. His favorite genre was science-fiction, and he also read a lot of fantasy novels. One day we were talking, and I mentioned that I also like to read. He showed me some of the titles that he had already finished. I don’t remember them all, but one that vividly sticks in my mind was a science-fiction thriller called The Gentle Giants of Ganymede by James P. Hogan. I don’t recall most of the other titles that I read but they totally engrossed me. But more than that, they spurred me to thought. For example, the propulsion system that Mister Hogan described in the spaceship used by the gentle giants of Ganymede, though it did not exist at the time the book was written, nor does it exist today, it gave me an idea of a way to propel rocket ships through space that could theoretically work today. Of course, that idea in and of itself, would not work without the use of another idea that I got from yet another book that I borrowed from my friend. The way that the spaceship worked in the book was that it created a vacuum that it beamed out in front of itself that it would drop itself into. And the faster it beamed that vacuum, the faster it would drop into that vacuum, and the faster it would go so that it could generate the vacuum beam faster and faster so that it could drop into that beam faster and faster. The trick was generating the initial inertia to spark propulsion. That was the trick. How could that be achieved? Well, a vacuum cleaner on earth cannot achieve a perfect vacuum. It cannot. It can come close, but it cannot create a perfect vacuum. We have atmospheric pressure to thank for that. And atmospheric pressure is what allows us to breathe and allows us to stay put. You know. That little thing called gravity. Well then, a rocket has to have rocket boosters number one to generate enough inertia to break Earth’s gravitational pull. Space is a different story, though. Out in space, there is no atmospheric pressure, so there is pretty close to a perfect vacuum. Notice I didn’t say there was a perfect vacuum in space. That’s why I think my idea would work. Cuz not even in space is there a perfect vacuum. So, all we would need would be something to generate a vacuum that we could then beam out in front of our ship once we were in space. Sounds wild right? It sounds so wild it just might work. But what would we use to generate the vacuum? Aha! That is the question. We would need something to generate that vacuum. A huge electric vacuum cleaner. Wait. There is no electricity in space. Where in the hell are you going to plug in a vacuum cleaner in space? And it’s gotta be one helluva big vacuum cleaner. That huge ass vacuum cleaner is going to eat one helluva lot of power, so you can’t just plug it into an ordinary 110-volt outlet or even a 220-volt outlet. Oh hell no. You’re going to have to bring your own damn power. Here’s where my two ideas come in. My first idea was a huge electrical power generator driven by rechargeable batteries. Diesel trucks use a system similar to that to generate electrical power for the truck. The generator generates electrical power to power all of the electrical systems in the truck as long as the engine is running, and it stores electrical power in a battery system that can be tapped for reserve power to start the engine and run the auxiliary power systems. My second idea was to couple that electrical power generator to the inertial rocket boosters so that initial thrust from the rocket boosters would give the power generator the spark it needed to begin its power generation. The idea behind the initial spark in the power generator was that it would start the power generation, but it would not start vacuum generation until a peak power threshold is reached. Once the peak power threshold is crossed, the rocket should theoretically be free of the Earth’s gravitational pull. Then, the power generator would generate the vacuum that would be beamed in front of the ship using a conical nozzle to direct the vacuum. As the vacuum is being generated and projected in front of the ship, the ship would fall into that vacuum at a faster and faster rate of speed, thereby generating the vacuum at a faster and faster rate of speed. It could work. Meanwhile, the power generator is still generating power that is recharging all of the batteries. That electrical current could be used as fuel for the rocket boosters for short-term steering in space. Short-term steering in space would be needed once key destinations are reached to navigate to more specific locations. The navigational system would also be needed for reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, upon return to earth. One final piece to the power generation system would be an auxiliary power generation system that used reserve electrical power to generate inverse power to back up the power generation system. The inverse power generation system would serve two purposes. The first purpose would be to generate auxiliary power when the main vacuum thrusters are reversed. The second purpose would be to augment the main power generator for forward vacuum generation. I wrote up all of these fancy plans with the intent to submit them for patents. But like an idiot, I left those papers laying around on my desk at work. Brilliant, huh? Yeah. I thought so too. Well, when I came to work the next day, those plans had disappeared. NASA has never showed up with a huge electrical power generation system that generates a vacuum in space. But the Japanese did develop a hybrid Synergy Drive system that uses a gasoline engine and an electric generator to generate electrical current that charges lithium batteries that then supply power to drive the car. The gasoline engine also provides primary power to drive the car. Sound familiar? It sounds very similar to the idea that I came up with for coupling the rocket booster to the power generator to generate the vacuum in space and powering the rocket boosters. Well, there’s no use crying about spilled milk. It’s already gone. Time to move on. But sometimes I think of what could have been. Every once in a while I get brilliant flashes of genius, but most of the time I am bogged down in one exercise in futility or another.
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