Problems with slower than light interstellar flight begin with the fuel problem that is common to all space flight. How do you carry enough fuel? The more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need to carry it. Secondly, organisms do not live long enough to complete an interstellar voyage and are not adapted to spend long periods of time away from the kind of environment in which they evolved. A spacecraft surrounded by vacuum with cosmic rays sleeting through it for decades and centuries is not a hospitable environment.
Brian Aldiss wrote once that human beings populated their Terrestrial environment with other intelligences, nature deities and spirits etc, which do not exist, then populated the Solar System with Selenites, Martians etc which do not exist and now populate extra-solar planets with other intelligences which (he thought) do not exist either. A lot more has been and is being learned about the number and characteristics of exo-planets so I think that, with increasing probability, ET's can be out there but how many, how near, and how easy to contact?
We have projected consciousness into nature and onto the heavens and are still doing that in a different way, i.e., we have traversed oceans and continents and built civilizations and empires and imagine ourselves continuing to operate in this way in the galaxy where, however, the spatiotemporal scale is completely different. Quantity affects quality. There has to be some scale on which we cannot operate so where is the dividing line?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Assuming the problems making STL interstellar travel so difficult are overcome, it does come with one advantage for the crews of such ships: time passes more "slowly" for them than it does for planet dwellers. Esp. if STL star ships are able to crowd close to the speed of light. That should allow for some degree if interstellar travel, an idea worked out by Anderson in detail in his Kith stories and STARFARERS.
It is the technology available to human beings which determines how large and extensive any confederation, federation, or empire can be. Because the technology to do so exists, I think it's more likely than not some power or alliance of powers will unify/conquer the world in the next century or two. Hopefully it will be a Western descended/oriented Solar Commonwealth, World Federation, or United Commonwealths. I do not want the kind of unification seen in David Wingrove's CHUN KUO series or the truly hideous Domination seen in Stirling's Draka books!
That last was not meant as a criticism, dystopian scenarios are legitimate topics in science fiction.
Ad astra! Sean
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