Although limited to relativistic speeds, the interstellar colonists in The Fleet Of Stars invent a field-drive. (For a field-drive in another Poul Anderson work, see here.) The Centaurian Lunarians share the field-drive specs with the Proserpinans who in turn observe evidence that the cybercosm also has such a drive. Centaurians have detected cybercosm spy robots, destroyed three and captured one.
Guthrie calls a small field-drive ship with minimal payload that can come near light speed because of its small mass a c-ship and claims that he took the name from a boyhood hero of his. Which hero? I am at a loss.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I like very much the kind of field drive we see in STARFARERS because it enables the crews of NAFAL spaceships to traverse interstellar space in durations that doesn't consume so much of their lifespans they can't do more than one such journey. It's still STL and that places practical limits on how far such NAFAL ships are likely to go, IIRC the sphere of space covered by Kith ships in STARFARERS is about 100 lightyears radiating in all directions from Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
Humans spread from Cape of Good Hope to Tierra del Fuego via the Bering Strait, by walking, probably with no individuals ending up more than several hundred km from their birth place. Similarly I expect humans with STL starships could spread through the Galaxy.
Kaor, Jim!
Maybe, and that would be good, if so. But you reminded me of how, in STARFARERS, the desire to continue that expansion was fading away long before the "Envoy" returned to Earth after 11,000 years. It was so hard, slow, and difficult finding terrrestroid planets with only NAFAL spaceships that any desire to do so faded away. Perhaps there's only so much that can be done with only STL tech?
Ad astra! Sean
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