A spaceship or even a space fleet of fugitives from the Solar System can make a subjectively instantaneous but objectively light-speed jump across any distance, let us imagine twenty thousand light-years. Thus, they effectively put themselves beyond any further contact. First, they will almost certainly have ensured that no one else knows which way or how far they have gone. Secondly, even if it were known, a pursuit fleet sent to take any kind of action against them would not be able to return to the Solar System for another twenty thousand years. I suppose that a fanatical suicide mission is just about imaginable - but then no one back home would know whether that mission had succeeded. And the fugitives, if they survive, cannot retaliate for another twenty thousand years.
In Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, there was a superlight drive and a million civilization-clusters in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds with very little inter-cluster contact simply because they were too many. The Long Way Home invites us to imagine an unknown number of colony planets and civilizations at different distances with no contact because of the light-speed limitation. Solar civilization does have contact, whether direct or indirect, with only about a dozen now independent human states within about two hundred light-years. Is that a diameter or a radius? Either way, it seems vast in the circumstances.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
As we see how use of the superdrive is described in THE LONG WAY HOME, 200 light years seems about right, if a reasonable number of planets are going to remain in regular contact with one another. More than that, forget about it!
Ad astra! Sean
"about a dozen now independent human states within about two hundred light-years"
A plausible number if a planet with a breathable atmosphere is needed for a human settlement. Far too low if lots of rotating space habitats can be built in any planetary system.
Anderson wrote "The Long Way Home" well before O'Neill published about such habitats.
Kaor, Jim!
Still, I agree O'Neill habitats could be one of several ways of mankind settling and founding new nations off Earth if all you have are STL means of space traveling.
Ad astra! Sean
You'd have to have a very, very stable civilization for 400-year round trips to be tolerable to the people who made them.
Yes, few people would want to make 400 year round trips, so I would expect the indirect contact would be news passed through several intermediate inhabited solar systems.
Also a lot of contact would be light speed communication without any humans making the trip. Whether a laser or radio beam for sending messages would be better than sending an automated spaceship that carries information would depend on what limitations there are to the light speed drive.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: And the Technon of Earth and its disguised agent, the Commercial Society, were stable enough to last 2000 years by the time of THE LONG WAY HOME.
Jim: Makes sense to me, with the Commercial Society providing some of those indirect contacts.
Ad astra! Sean
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