[Randallw]

With the attention my thread on Aliens is getting I thought I'd try something else.

What are peoples views on propulsion for space ships of the future?. Obviously ships of the near future will be Newtonian and have to do things like turn halfway through the trip to decelerate. Will there, though, be ships in the future which can manouvere like planes?. It seem that in literature there are the hard science writers who only using newtonian movement, and there are the more "pulp" writers who have ships moving about wherever they want. In the "Timeships" the writer still has newtonian movement in about 800,000 AD. To move from the Dyson Sphere to earth a pod with no personal propulsion is flung on a gravitational course to intersect earths orbit. The Time traveller asks what if they miss, and the Morlock after trying to understand the question says simply they won't because its impossible for the calculations to be wrong.