(A day away from the lap top enables my brain to elaborate what might have been a simple post into a complicated one. Because my daughter, Aileen, is designing a marine-themed garden, we drove to a nearby coastal village to beachcomb for appropriate materials. However, this does not prevent a Poul Anderson fan from thinking about the Technic History or the Time Patrol.)
Having compared Robert Heinlein's Future History with Anderson's Technic History here, we now compare time machines in HG Wells' The Time Machine and Anderson's Time Patrol with spaceships in the Technic History and in Anderson's World Without Stars.
The Time Machines
If Wells' Time Machine occupies the same space as "some substance," then the jamming together of molecules and atoms will cause a profound chemical reaction, possibly a far-reaching explosion. For how the Time Patrol's timecycles avoid this danger, see Miniaturization.
The Spaceships
In World Without Stars, if a space-jumping spaceship arrives in the same place as a solid body, then the jamming together of atoms will cause a massive explosion.
In the Technic History, the nuclear fusion unit of the micro-jumping What Cheer occupies the same space as a bit of solid matter. With the fusion unit disabled, Captain Mukerji uses every charged accumulator on the ship to keep the engine going until he lands on Ivanhoe, which explains why David Falkayn and three others are stranded there.
This in turn leads into a list of reasons for being stranded in space:
van Rijn was stranded on Diomedes because there was a bomb in the main generator of his skycruiser;
in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, five couples are stranded on an extrasolar planet because, leaving their Star Ship in orbit, they land in a lifeboat only to have its atomic convertors go out of control and destroy the boat;
also in the Psychotechnic History, other starship crews become isolated when they are thrown of course by trepidation vortices. See Lost Starships.
If the premise of a problem-solving story is the need to escape from a particular planet, then the reason for being stranded there has to be plausible in the first place.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I like that ANALOG cover and the very IDEA of prospecting on the Moon. It makes me wonder if the Moon has any minerals which could be useful/valuable for off Earth colonists.
Your daughter is designing a marine themed garden? I'm reminded of the underwater gardens we see on Nyanza in "The Game of Glory."
My view is that if we ever get an interplanetary/interstellar society, there will be space ships whose crews will be stranded for one reason or another. Either accidentally or by deliberate malice.
And the stranding of the humans in "Star Ship" was caused by all of the crew of the star ship leaving, when at least one or two should have stayed behind. And THAT happened to be precisely when an accident wrecked the landing boat, stranding everybody. If somebody had still been on the ship, another boat would have been sent ground side. Ironic!
Sean
"if the Moon has any minerals which could be useful/valuable for off Earth colonists."
There is currently lots of speculation about mining water ice & other volatiles from permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles.
There is also the possiblity of very high concentration of KREEP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KREEP
The Uranium & Thorium would be useful for energy production at a lunar settlement.
The Potassium & Phosphorus would be useful for any life in that settlement.
Rare Earth Elements have lots of uses in current technology. Even if there is enough on earth to make it uneconomic to export REE from the moon to earth, I could see a lunar settlement using them in their own manufacturing.
Kaor, Jim!
I like these ideas and I hope they will be practical. I did know of the suggestions made about Luna having a good amount of frozen water in polar craters.
Ad astra! Sean
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