Boddhisatva

Maybe more like the drive that Solomon Epstein started with in the novella, The Drive, but with fission instead of fusion. I don’t think it would be any good for a manned ice-hauler trip out past the belt though as that would face the same problems that a trip to Mars currently faces.

On the other hand, if such a drive could get a crewed ship to Mars in two months then it should be able to reach the outer planets in a reasonable time with a much larger payload than we can manage now. We might well be able to send large robotic probes to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter like the ones we’ve sent to Mars and get there in months instead of years.

Yes, what we call the speed of light is really the speed of light in a vacuum. When light passes through a medium like water or glass it travels slower. That causes the light to be refracted which means that it changes direction slightly based on the energy of the light (color) and the refractory index the material. Glass will refract a red laser by a certain amount while water will refract it by a different amount.

Fun fact, because different colors refract differently, when you shine a white light through a specially shaped piece of glass called a prism, you will see a rainbow pattern.

https://www.science-sparks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/shutterstock_1194072568-1024x606.jpg.webp

When I go to bed I put my pill bottle in one place. When I take the pill in the morning, I put it in a different place. I’ve considered buying one of those timer bottle caps. They fit generic pill bottles and have timer built into the top. You can look at the timer and see how long it’s been since you opened the bottle last.