re: #67 wheat-dogg

Are you speaking of MHD drive (magnetohydrodynamic)? It was the propulsion system of the fictional Red October in the Tom Clancy novel, which Clancy extrapolated from some defense research.

It’s never gone into production, AFAIK, because it’s not practical (you need temps near absolute zero for the superconducting magnets) and in fact not completely silent, as Clancy’s sonar guy discovered.

About that requirement for superconducting magnets …do you remember a children’s story about the tortise and the hare?