[OT} Alderson Drive

Hi everybody,

I just got an email from somebody who was looking for information on Alderson
Drive. According to him, there was a real person named Alderson who actually
had a scientific basis (accurate or not) that Pournelle and
other sci-fi authors have used.  (He got my email from the GZG Archives,
since there has been talk of the Alderson drive on the list in the past.)

Has anybody out there heard anything about this? Is this true? If so, does
anybody have any information pointers on the web? (There are references to
information sources in the Archives, but no links that I could find.)

Thanks,

> On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 11:07:50AM -0400, Jerry Han wrote:

I think it was Dan Alderson, but I could be mistaken. Dean, maybe?

> I just got an email from somebody who was looking for information on

Jerry, I believe there is or was a Dan Alderson at JPL who worked out the
details that Pournelle used.  The description--not as detailed as I'd
like--is in NSpace, which is a collection of stories and some essays,
mostly by Larry Niven IIRC.