If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on its feet.
But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat’s back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?
Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back. If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That’s right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat’s limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn’t do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship using the aforementioned anti-gravity device.
One could power a ship by means of cats held in suspended animation (say, about -190 degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs, thus avoiding the possibility of collisions due to tempermental felines. More importantly, how do you steer, once the cats are all held in stasis?
I offer a modest proposal:
We all know that wearing a white shirt at an Italian restaurant is a guaranteed way to take a trip to the laudromat. Plaster the outside of your ship with white shirts. Place four nozzles symmetrically around the ship, which is, of course, saucer shaped. Fire tomato sauce out in proportion to the directions you want to go. The ship, drawn by the shirts, will automatically follow the sauce. If you use t-shirts, you won’t go as fast as you would by using, say, expensive dress shirts. This does not work as well in deep gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a black hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter force of the anti-gravity cat/butter machine. Your only hope at that point is to jettison enormous quantities of Tide. This will create the well-known Gravitational Tidal Force.
Nah, sounds like too much trouble. I will stick with the infinite probability drive.
Since its existence is almost infinitely improbable already, it should pop into being any second now.
[youtube Urg-EqR-pHc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urg-EqR-pHc&feature=related youtube]
It is way too early for that. Seriously Techie, I think you broke my brain.
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Since opposites attract, one could power a Mars expedition simply by christening the ship "Pax".
Mmmmm…buttered cat.
Sounds like you mixed Chinese and Indian food.
Actually now that you mention it, a mix of Chinese and Indian food sounds delicious! <Runs off to lunch>
Hmmm, interesting. I must say that the buttered cat idea has never occurred to me. I'll have to have one of the Emmas look into it. I'm not so sure about the white shirt/pasta sauce idea for thrusters. I think a better idea would be to use phobias. Have someone who is terrified of spiders strapped to the rear of the hull, and dangle a live tarantula in front of him for thrust. This could also be used for steering by mounting a couple more arachnophobes up towards the bow. You might get even better results with bathophobes rather than with buttered pussycats. hmm, hmm, hmmm… I wondered what I was going to do this afternoon.
This made coffee come out of my nose earlier today. Could we power a ship on AT-generated guffaws?
There is a chance that might give us enough residual energy to power lighting and lifesupport but we'll need to devise a way to store it.
[rolls eyes] The cat lands on his feet due to reflexes. The toast (anecdotal evidence notwithstanding) lands butter side down just over 50% of the time. Given a choice between reflexive course correction and flip-a-coin blind chance, my money's on the reflexes. This "problem", while amusing, is no more than a canard.
EDIT: Yes, I realize this is a lark and for yuk value only, but you could have come up with a less ridiculous premise, couldn't you?
OK, two things:
1. I believe it is already well established that *I* am the Senior Vice President of Killjoy around here.
2. This is, admittedly, recycled material from the "classic" Internet in the pre-web days. The foto-chop image is all me, though, so I figured it still counts as original content.
For me it was worth it, getting to the punchline "Gravitational Tidal Force" was something like "The Aristocrats" joke.
So you're entrusted to kill the joy of your own posts? How's that work?
I never actually said it wasn't original. It's just that the premise (while amusing at first) doesn't survive critical examination, therefore all the jokes based on it are kinda- well, not so funny. For the record, your "kitteh in a glass punkin" fotochop is very amusing, though.
Please don't take me seriously, nobody else does;D
I think you might be off a little with the plan of using red sauce and shirts for directional drive. I have found that while irresistible in nature, the attraction is finite in quantity. The attraction drops off right around the fine line between where the shirt is salvageable with extraordinary effort and a lost cause to be discarded.
We need an attraction with more staying power. Perhaps harness the attraction of a human female to fancy shoes?
/shameless attempt to get a hot chick on the ship.
You could also power a ship on hot-chick-fear. All you need to do is keep me drunkenly lurching towards a pack of hotties for a few light years…
She doesn't seem like the fancy shoe type, but still…
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So I just tried this. Cat isn't doing so well and the toast was delicious.
Damnit.
I remember reading a short story years ago,
about a ship powered by happy thoughts (aliens
gave us the tech). Then they discovered that,
after the coed crew started pairing up, that the
ship ran reeealllly well on orgasms.
I thought (as a 19yr old) "best porno/sci-fi
crossover movie evah!"
Maybe Allen Dean Foster?
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When attached to the shaft of a generator…INFINITE POWER!
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