visinedrops

Thank you for all the replies. I need to take a class (or series of classes) in whatever science it is I'm trying to figure out. I had an idea of using light as a propellant for space vehicles where individual light-emitting devices would turn on and off in sequence along the outer hull of a cylinder and the ability to be aimed in such a way to create omni-directional thrust. But, since space causes no drag on photons, then they would not be a viable source of propulsion. Again, thank you.

I suppose I completely garbled my thought while trying to put it into words and confused everyone with a greater ability to explain things than I. My thought encompasses the idea that light travels at a set speed. Constantly. Since there is a mathematical calculation to determine how long it takes for a photon to travel from one place to another, it would stand to reason that whatever it is travelling through (space) is causing resistance in its momentum. Since nothing with mass can travel light speed, it would also imply that, although space is a vacuum, it restricts the movement of an object through it. Hence why I'm curious if space has drag. I don't know if that cleared it up any, or just added mud.

Looking at space and time, relativity, and matter, I have prompted a question in my head. If time is reactive to something, it implies that it travels. Photons have mass when they are traveling and they travel at the speed of light. It takes around 8 seconds for light to travel from the sun to Earth. The same concept can be procured from terminal velocity of a falling object. It reaches a set speed based on its mass to resistance of the matter it is traveling through. So, the thought in my head is that space itself has resistance. Since light is composed of photons, and they have mass, then the time it takes them to travel a distance implies that there is a certain amount of drag to space itself. Otherwise, when a photon is created on the sun, it would instantly appear on the earth, and therefore negate the effect of time. So, back to my question, does space have drag?