Like the Kirkasanters later in the Technic History, the Trillians know that faster than light interstellar travel is possible but must build their spaceships without the benefit of any higher technology.
They use:
large, clumsy fission units;
vacuum tubes;
glass rectifiers;
kilometers of wire;
data stored on tape, not in single molecules, retrieved with cathode-ray scanners, not with quantum-field pulses;
computers composed of miniaturized gas-filled units reacting in microseconds, not of photon interplays reacting in a single nanosecond.
By contrast, a Technic spaceship is an integrated system of:
a thermonuclear power plant;
initiative-grade navigation and engineering computers;
full-cycle life support;
solid-state circuits;
molecular- and nuclear-level transitions;
not moving parts but forcefields;
more energy than matter;
an organism rather than a mechanism.
Sounds good. Will it ever exist? Does it exist elsewhere already? Will we ever know?
Another reference to gravanol. (p. 627)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
We should imagine the level of technology seen in "A Little Knowledge" as approximately dating to about the mid AD 2470's in my revision of Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization. So, IF we ever get serious about the possibilities of space by getting OFF this rock in a real way, I can imagine humans having spaceships like those you described in approximately 400 years.
I simply can't agree that ours is the only intelligent race to exist in a Galaxy with 200 billion stars! So it is possible other races have reached the level of technology seen in "A Little Knowledge." Additionally, IIRC, Anderson speculated in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? that our species might be one of the earliest to advance as far as we have, so far, in technology.
If what I have said in the previous paragraph is correct, that might be one reason why efforts at detecting or making contact with other intelligent races has not yet succeeded. Because those other species have not yet advanced as much as we have.
Ad astra! Sean
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