"Westward we sail, but night overtakes us. Watch over us through the dark and bring us into day."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 640.
Are they crossing the Atlantic? At any rate, they are not making a one way crossing:
"...breathe us forward in our faring and home again to our loves..." (ibid.)
I read this prayer as if it was uttered by European immigrants to the New World but maybe that was unwarranted. However, this sense of a New World waiting to be explored and settled is present in some of Anderson's works that are set in the past. The King of Ys imagines building a realm across the ocean and, in the Time Patrol series:
"...'Ha!' Bjarni Herjulfsson shouts at the steering oar. 'A gull,' promise of the new land ahead -"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 109.
"From harbors like this, a few life-times hence, men would set sail for the New World."
-Time Patrol, p. 754.
"'Okay...The Chinese discovered America.'" (TP, p. 129)
- says Manson Everard to John Sandoval, who is standing on the polar bear rug that Bjarni Herjulfsson gave to Everard.
8 comments:
Hi, Paul!
And the "new worlds" OUR generation should be thinking of exploring and settling is OFF Earth. I mean, of course, the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter, the STARS!!! And I believe the practical means of making those first steps off this rock would be by building the kind of SSTO ships Jerry Pournelle advocated in his paper "The SSX Concept."
The past forty years has been a bitterly frustrating time, a time blind short sightedness or outright hostililty to reaching out for the potentialities of space. And we both know Poul Anderson was a zealous advocate of a REAL space program.
Sean
Sean,
Yes, I thought of adding that the universe is full of potential New Worlds that are explored in Anderson's other works but you have now made that point.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
And it's a very important point! One Poul Anderson stressed over and over in his works. I like his short essay "Commentary" discussing and defending the need for a real space program in SPACE FOLK.
Sean
Sean:
I would quibble with you. I think the reusable two stage to orbit rockets like what SpaceX is working toward are more likely to be practical.
Kaor, Jim!
And I think that was exactly what Dr. Pournelle had in mind! I would not be surprised if Elon Musk had read both Pournelle's SSTO papers and essays by Anderson like "Our Many Roads to the Stars" (to be found in NEW AMERICA).
I only wish both Pournelle and Anderson could have lived to see what Musk and SpaceX has, so far, achieved.
Ad astra! Sean
SSTO = *Single* Stage To Orbit
It's *hard* to get all the propellant for getting to orbit into a tank that will go to orbit.
To make it practical a tank that is *much* less heavy than the propellant is needed if we try to do it with chemical fuels.
Some *possibilities* for doing it would use a way to get a high exhaust speed for the rocket.
Eg: use metallic hydrogen, IF that can be made AND be made metastable at modest pressures.
Or: a bit more likely laser or microwave beams from the ground to heat hydrogen.
MAYBE a nuclear rocket can be made to have a high enough thrust to weight ratio to launch, but the beamed energy from a nuclear reactor on the ground looks more plausible to me.
Kaor, Jim!
It's plain you know much more about rocket engineering than I do. I would need to reread the Pournelle and Anderson papers I cited to get a more adequate understanding.
I have read a bit about a proposed nuclear powered engine called the NERVA motor.
Ad astra! Sean
Apparently NERVA doesn't have a high enough thrust to take off from the ground. It may be useful to get from Low Earth Orbit to elsewhere in the solar system since a more modest thrust is fine for anything other than takeoff from a planetary surface, and the higher exhaust speed means less propellant is needed for a given mission.
I have seen some writing about another nuclear rocket engine 'DUMBO' which if it can be built would have a high enough thrust for a SSTO.
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