Anti-Grav

"A Tragedy of Errors."

Roan Tom's first sight of a Nikean aircraft:

"It was a one- or two-man job, a delta wing whose contrail betrayed the energy source as chemical rather than atomic or electric. However, instruments reported it as applying that power to a gravity drive." (p. 472)

I think that, even to us, chemical energy seems inappropriately primitive for an engine advanced enough to control gravity.

We would not be surprised to see wings on an aircraft but Dagny is contemptuous:

"'...gravmotors so weak they need wings!'" (p. 488)

Well, if you can control gravity, then you do not need wings. But what would happen if gravity control went out of control? In a TV adaptation of HG Wells' The First Men In The Moon, a sheet of Cavorite is held in position just above the Lunar surface, causing the Lunar atmosphere to shoot into space, which explains why the Moon was airless when Armstrong and Aldrin arrived - a neat idea, to use Wells' idea to make his novel a prequel to Apollo. (A blog motto: always remember Wells.)

Maybe Tom is more understanding than Dagny:

"Given a gravity drive, however weak, airfoils were mainly for auxiliary lift and control." (p. 509)

At the same time, Tom makes his own observations on the prevalent theme of metal shortage. After he has forced a local aircraft down with a tractor beam:

"The wingtips were crumpled, the fuselage punctured. (The covering was mostly some fluorosynthetic. What a metal shortage they must have here!)" (pp. 508-509)

We know that the planetary metal shortage is taking us somewhere even if we do not know where.