It is
as if this universe has been designed to produce life, consciousness, intelligence, civilization and technology but to prevent interstellar contact. Technological civilizations do not coexist closely enough in space to detect and visit each other within their lifetimes. Distances and necessary energy expenditures are too great. The vacuum and radiation outside of atmospheres and of magnetic and gravitational fields and at relativistic velocities are too destructive of complex organic and artificial systems. A galaxy full of intelligent species some of them equipped with the quantum hyperdrive is not the galaxy that we inhabit. A universe full of interstellar civilizations and empires seems to be as fantastical as an Earth inhabited by Elves and orcs. It seems that those who said, "That is just science fiction," were correct. We need first to survive our current destructive activities and secondly to learn what is really feasible which will be a lot but not what we had thought.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to dissent from much of what you wrote here. While we know of no non-human high tech civilizations "near" us that might not be the care in those parts of the galaxy where the stars are only light months away from each other. And while the distances and costs in energy for space traveling seem too high Anderson would disagree with those who say such costs are intolerable. E.g., this is a bit of what he wrote for the "Commentary" included with SPACE FOLK: "Whether or not we reach the stars (and we can eventually, with or without Einsteinian speed limits laid on us, if we really want to) the Solar System holds more than enough."
I disagree that the practical difficulties you mentioned about radiation and vacuum outside Earth's atmosphere makes space traveling too much for us. Robert Zubrin, in his book THE CASE FOR MARS goes into massive detail into how such problems could be overcome using merely the technology available when that book was pub. in 2011.
It is true we have nothing like the FTL quantum hyperdrive of Anderson's Technic stories, but some serious scientists don't dismiss FTL as totally impossible. I would also argue we should start with the Solar System, esp. when we recall the great advances made by Elon Musk and SpaceX in bringing down the costs of STL space traveling. I don't think you've paid enough attention to how Stirling has explained how drastically SpaceX has brought down the costs of shipping cargo off Earth.
The human race being what it is we are always going to have "destructive activities," but that does not have to be the sum total of what we are. I also believe simply getting off Earth and into space in serious and real ways will make some of our current problems irrelevant.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Destructive activities" are destroying our environment now.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Drat, I replied to this in the wrong combox, "Two Kinds of Impossibility."
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: well, the way to avoid destruction is to move the industries to space. You can't pollute hard vacuum.
Can that be done in time?
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