> the conjoiner drives use [science] to achieve 1g acceleration to get to near light speed
For [science] read [magic], more or less, but yeah. In the very first stories they were Bussard ramjets, but this got retconned out (and a Bussard ramjet actually shows up in a later book as a failed experiment). In most of the books they're more or less applied magic, though.
This, incidentally, seems to be a common theme, as later discoveries tended to fall down on the side of Bussard ramjets not working (due to insufficient density etc). The last of Niven's Known Space books have some special pleading for how the pilot has to carefully direct the ramjet to get sufficient combustion volume, a detail that was never present in the old ones.
For [science] read [magic], more or less, but yeah. In the very first stories they were Bussard ramjets, but this got retconned out (and a Bussard ramjet actually shows up in a later book as a failed experiment). In most of the books they're more or less applied magic, though.
This, incidentally, seems to be a common theme, as later discoveries tended to fall down on the side of Bussard ramjets not working (due to insufficient density etc). The last of Niven's Known Space books have some special pleading for how the pilot has to carefully direct the ramjet to get sufficient combustion volume, a detail that was never present in the old ones.