(i) Orbital flight, which exists now. A novel in which a character spends time in the International Space Station would no longer be sf.
(ii) Regular interplanetary flight with currently conceivable technology. This could grow from (i).
(iii) Interstellar flight with currently conceivable technology. I do not know whether the Bussard ramjet is still considered feasible. (iii) could grow from (ii).
(iv) In "Time Lag" and a few other stories, Poul Anderson imagines a new kind of space drive. On the one hand, it does not break the relativistic light speed barrier. On the other hand, it instantly takes a ship to just under light speed and decelerates it equally quickly. Thus, an eight light year round trip becomes an eight year round trip and the space travelers benefit from time dilation. (iv) cannot grow directly out of (iii).
(v) Various imagined means of faster than light interstellar flight. This is a second qualitative leap.
Are we about to make the transition from (i) to (ii)?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm so impatient for us to at least graduate from "i" to "ii"! Which should have happened decades ago! If so, then we might conceivably have been seriously planning to do "iii" by now.
Sean
@ Sean:
ii: Exploration: yes. Setlement: no. Here's why (probably) not: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html
iii: Why (probably) not for a LONG time.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstellar_Travel_-_The_Wait_Calculation_and_the_Incentive_Trap_of_Progress
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
And I absolutely disagree with that kind of nay saying! Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner, in their book THE CASE FOR MARS, gives us a detailed argument, based on current technology on how Mars could be colonized for real. I recommend this book despite one or two nit picks I would make.
Sean
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