Whenever I explain my research, the conversation goes something like

Me: "I'm working on a concept for a contact-less spacecraft actuator"

Them: "A what?"

Me: "*sigh* I'm trying to make a tractor beam."

That, combined with our lab's youtube videos being listed along with the perpetual motion machines always makes me feel a bit quackish.

But when I outline using EC actuators to take advantage of an object's natural tendency to fall up on the underside of the ISS, I'm talking about legit science, I swear!