While a fleet of spaceships crosses the distance between two planetary systems at half light-speed, a spacesuited man leaves his ship, fires a magnetic bolt with a light line unreeling behind it at the nearest ship, tests the line's security, pulls himself across between ships and repeats this exercise until he has reached his target ship.
No! (Would you travel like that?)
The ships expel nine tons for each one ton that they transport and will need months at the target system to refine enough reaction material for the return journey. Most of the passengers are in cold sleep. Will anyone ever expend that much effort, energy, engineering etc to try to colonize a terrestroid extrasolar planet?
"...a cramped, sterile, vacuum-enclosed spaceship, month after month after month, began to affect the human mind rather like bandaged vision when afloat in a tank of warm water. Minds could never have disintegrated as quickly in midocean (sun and moon, wind and rain, the infinite shifting pattern of waves, the hope of catching a fish or seeing an island) as they did between the stars. It was accepted that a spaceman near the end of his year-watch was not quite sane." (part two, 4, p. 64)
Paradox: the freedom of interstellar travel but in a cramped, sterile environment. Well, an interstellar vessel must not be cramped or sterile. In Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, the spaceship Astra, really a hollowed asteroid, is:
"...a city of clustered domes and turrets and housings and machines..." (p. 226)
Anyone who crosses an interstellar distance at sub-light speeds has to take their environment with them and therefore is not dependent on finding a habitable environment at their destination.
The asterites in Tales... have gravity control but not FTL. In James Blish's Okies series, gravity control unexpectedly generates FTL, a deus ex machina.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I would say "Yes," because I thought the method used by First Captain Joshua Coffin for getting to a desired ship reasonable.
In addition, the second part of ORBIT UNLIMITED was first pub. by ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION for the Jan. 1960 issue. In the preface Anderson added to the 1978 Gregg Press reprint of ORBIT he wrote: "Subsequent scientific thought has brought up several matters of which nobody was then aware, as far as I know. For instance, when Joshua Coffin crosses from ship to ship, you must imagine that some kind of force screen protects him and his entire fleet from the effects of collision with gas molecules--otherwise radiation would have killed everybody long before."
I am guessing your copy of ORBIT did not have that Introduction.
Agreed, what Anderson said about the dangers and costs of STL interstellar travel. But, it's my belief (and hope) there will be plenty of men willing to accept those dangers/costs for the hope of reaching other stars and planets--to get some idea of WHAT is out there in the galaxy. It's also my belief there will be others on Earth angry, discontented, frustrated enough, etc., that they will be willing to leave Earth to settle other worlds. I can also see some gov'ts willing to help them do that, to rid themselves of bothersome malcontents. IWHBD.
Ad astra! Sean
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