Background
Sometime in the beginning of the 80's I was listening to a radio talkshow were listeners could put questions to a panel of professionals. I was half listening whilst doing something else when a listener had put the question of what science thought about the possibility of the existence of flying saucers.
Some professor in physics from an english university took the floor and explained truthfully that with the laws of physics you can proof that it is not possible that any such thing may exist. (Which is true according to the law of momentum conservation in Newtonian physics)
At first I just accepted the answer "as is". But within a few minutes my mind began to bother me. I thought: It is true that nothing at all within my education speaks in favor to the existence of such a device. But this is not the same statement as a complete proof that it is not possible by any means at all? My luck was my stupidity and lack of knowledge of the stringency and extensive validity of the law of momentum conservation in Newtonian mechanics. I was familiar to the law itself but not how wide and unbreakable its application was. Well, it wouldn't be called a LAW if otherwise. (Later on I will show how relativity in extreme cases will break this law in favor to energy/mass conservation.)
Used to the demand to be very strict and thorough in everything, as the set-up, conditions and performance, when presenting something as a scientific derivation leading to what you can call a proof my mind couldn't stop to begin to analyze the question as if someone (a teacher or a corporate outsourcer) had given me the task to construct such a device with no economical limitations and I could only decline to accept the order if I could give real proof to that it was absolutely impossible to be done.
My first question was, what was it actually my customer had ordered or in other words define the object "flying saucer"— what are its characteristics. To be able to accept an order you must have all of the specifications of what you are expected to deliver. This also applies to a scientific derivation.
Even a child understands that the most vital part to build a car or flying saucer would be the engine and also that the engine of a flying saucer would be quite distinguished from that in a car. But how and why? Well, — a car has wheels to begin with and secondly it cannot fly, at last we can mention that a "real" flying saucer doesn't even have a propeller. Yep! — Here we have our sought specifications. A child from the sandbox helped me put them up! Do they seem hard to live up to? That's maybe why we still drive cars and also why I am still writing here — there would be no point in it if anyone just could look up the answer in some book or on wikipedia?
So what are the specifications we got from the sandbox child? It's an engine that if it is put into a completely hermetically closed box can cause the propulsion of the box (and what's attached to it) even in empty space without squirting out anything like a jet or rocket engine does. In other words the device, however it is constituted or of what, must deliver an impulse of momentum to the box (even in ES) without any propulsion by an jet leaving off any remnants of solid, liquid or gasous matter or even light. Does this seem even harder to live up to? That's what I thought too!
As I understood the quest would be quite hard. So I thought that I would first need some good mathematical exercise before I was ready to move on. So I decided that I at first should solve the derivation of Fermat's last theorem, which is purely mathematical. After this I would be ready to go on to the quest of determining if the construction of a flying saucer engine is possible or not because this is harder and needs skills in both mathematics and physics.