On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Ethan McKinney
<xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> It was a laser drive, not fusion. Cut the Kzinti ship in half.

I am kinda thinking it was the big Bussard ram jet that powered Human
sublight ships before the humans acquired the standard hyperdrive from
the Outsiders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

And I seem to recall that the exhaust was radioactive and potentially
fatal for things that travelled through the exhaust.

Although with the Bussard ramjet ships being slower than light, the
ships also had multi-megawatt interstellar range output  comm lasers,
which the crews  *also* did not consider to be "weapons".

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24455/which-novel-or-short-story-was-the-first-to-utilize-a-bussard-ramjet

Although there's a reference to dooing the same thing with the comm laser, here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZmIEJYPptU4C&pg=PA561&lpg=PA561&dq=bussard+ramjet+niven+angel%27s+pencil&source=bl&ots=kn2U6p3a77&sig=qpRpVO-fbMR_Fr9KewuuLyLo2SM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEYQ6AEwB2oVChMIwpiZ8ZX0xgIVyFs-Ch2CjQpv#v=onepage&q=bussard%20ramjet%20niven%20angel%27s%20pencil&f=false

Dan

--

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine
kook." -Alan Morgan