Is Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game" an accurate extrapolation of interplanetary exploration? Not a repeat of Apollo with a few astronauts walking on a planetary surface for a short while before returning to Earth but self-sustaining light sail colony ships with crews of hundreds remaining in orbit while sending fleets of auxiliary craft down to the surface of Mars, Iapetus etc:
J. Peter Vajk to Mars;
Vladimir to Mercury;
Zeus to Jupiter;
Chronos to Saturn.
Will this happen in this century? Can Earth get out of its current Chaos? I don't know. I am going out to a meeting shortly and visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomorrow. However, let us reflect on this opening instalment of Anderson's Technic History.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would love it if real sail-ships were built! And I hope we soon see SpaceX sending "Starships" to both the Moon and Mars.
I do not foresee our Chaos, in the socio/political senses, ending any time soon.
Ad astra! Sean
I would like to see serious testing of two types of space sailing.
1) reflecting sunlight to produce thrust both away from the sun and opposite to the direction the sunlight is reflected. Reflecting the sunlight in the direction you are going around the sun will slow you down result in you moving closer to the sun.
2) using a magnetic field to interact with plasma in space. This could be used to have the solar wind push you away from the sun. Also maybe to use the magnetic field of a planet to slow down or maybe speed up relative to the planet, especially a giant like Jupiter or Saturn.
If I understand the magnetic field variety of sail correctly some equipment could be used both for the magnetic sail and an ion drive so if the plasma isn't moving the direction you want to accelerate you can use the ion drive.
Kaor, Jim!
Absolutely! I want all of what you suggested being actually built. I've seen many articles at the CENTAURI DREAMS website discussing similar ideas. But one of the frustrations I've long felt, since Pournelle's trail blazing "The Big Rain" (which I read in 1980), has been how nothing real has been done to make such ideas an actuality. Until, of course, Elon Musk and SpaceX arrived to seriously shake up a too long stagnant space program.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, costs of transport to orbit have fallen by 8/10ths over the past decade, and will probably fall by a similar margin in the next.
(From $10,000 per pound to $1,500 per pound. Probably to less than $100 per pound and possibly to below $40 per pound in the next.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that's wonderful! The naysayers could no longer plausibly whine and gibber nonsense about space being too costly and difficult for mankind to get out into.
Ad astra! Sean
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