"It is now known that any prolonged human presence deeper in space would need to be behind a shield of the effective strength of two feet of lead, which would weigh 400 tonnes for a small capsule."<p>Uhm, the first thing that comes to my mind - regardless of whether this black hole propulsion might actually work - is the amount of lead we have available. Just building the spaceship seems to be just as much a problem as accelerating it..
They don't seem to mention how to contain the black hole. What holds its position steady within the spaceship?<p>If we made a large enough one say 1/2 earth mass, we'd get free "artificial" gravity on the spaceship.
I saw this headline and flashed back to the Gunbuster Science Lessons.<p>"Dimensional Wave Super String Excitation Degenerated Radius Jump Gravitational Field Super-light Speed Navigation. WARP for short."