Editing Magnetohydrodynamic drive (section)

== Fiction ==
''Oregon,'' a ship in the ''[[Oregon Files]]'' series of books by author [[Clive Cussler]], has a magnetohydrodynamic drive. This allows the ship to turn very sharply and brake instantly, instead of gliding for a few miles. In ''[[Valhalla Rising (novel)|Valhalla Rising]],'' Clive Cussler writes the same drive into the powering of [[Captain Nemo]]'s ''[[Nautilus (Verne)|Nautilus]].''

The film adaptation of ''[[The Hunt for Red October (film)|The Hunt for Red October]]'' popularized the magnetohydrodynamic drive as a "caterpillar drive" for [[submarine]]s, a nearly undetectable "silent drive" intended to achieve [[Stealth technology#Acoustics|stealth]] in [[submarine warfare]]. In reality, the current traveling through the water would create gases and noise, and the magnetic fields would induce a detectable magnetic signature. In the film, it was suggested that this sound could be confused with geological activity. In [[The Hunt for Red October|the novel]] from which the film was adapted, the caterpillar that ''Red October'' used was actually a [[pump-jet]] of the so-called "tunnel drive" type (the tunnels provided acoustic camouflage for the cavitation from the propellers).

In the [[Ben Bova]] novel ''[[The Precipice (Bova novel)|The Precipice]],'' the ship where some of the action took place, ''Starpower 1,'' built to prove that exploration and mining of the [[asteroid belt]] was feasible and potentially profitable, had a magnetohydrodynamic drive mated to a [[fusion power]] plant.