Leaving The Solar System

[skepticalbip]

Writer's Guidelines - Contact Us | Analog Science Fiction - "We publish science fiction stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse. Try to picture Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without the science and you'll see what I mean. No story!"

Yes, "some aspect of future science" is what makes it science fiction. Without that, it is just fiction.

But writing science fiction does not mean that the specific details of exactly how that future science works needs to be explained. If the writer knew that then he would be a genius inventor rather than a fiction writer. Take the hard sci-fi story, "Contact", a lot of current science is in the story but only what the 'future science' does not how it works is covered. There is no attempt to try to explain how that spinning capsule transported Ellie Arroway across the galaxy, only that the 'alien science' did it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Humans have nothing like a generation ship set up on Earth

I disagree. The Austronesian people colonised the Pacific Ocean by this means and handled it just fine for three thousand years before the arrival of fast steamships and radio put a close to their isolated lifestyle.

An island isn't outer space.

There are still some small, isolated human groups with only a couple of hundred individuals.

The Sentinelese people of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean are completely isolated from the rest of humanity, and some estimates put their population as low as fifty. They still retain sufficient sanity to understand that missionaries are best killed on sight.

Isolation from people isn't as much the issue as isolation from the environment itself. Living in a tin can forever, we aren't exactly wired for that. And while we can choose who starts that process, the generations afterwards might not be able to handle it as well. Granted, it would be all they know, so possibly could work.

Just because currently spacecraft are all 'tin cans' with no life other than the astronauts and perhaps a couple of experimental plants or animals, and no room to swing a cat even if one was brought along, doesn't mean that it will always be thus.

Which then leads to the next issue.

"Why are we doing this?! If we turn around now, we can get back to Earth quicker. We're so sick of eating sausage."

A generation ship would likely need an ecosystem, rather than a mere life support system - after all, that's how spaceship Earth has managed to support life for thousands of millions of years without a service call to the maintenance department.

My gawd... hogweed eventually becomes the sustainer of human life in space. The irony.

A generation ship would have to have more in common with a remote island than with the International Space Station.

I can't imagine how many generations we'll need to create a generation ship. In the end, a generation ship's benefit is limited. I mean, other than in the Wall-E sense of things. The commitment to the mission is tenable with each following generation. And I ponder just how large a crew is needed to make it work. The redundancy for the ship equipment would also be needed for the crew, engineers, doctors, mid-level accountants, justice, sanitation engineers, people that know why that blue button keeps blinking all the damn time, botanists, biologists, physicists, chemists, computer experts, someone that can fix musical instruments, educators, and one libertarian to fuck it all up. In general, novels and shows usually have one or two people do all of that stuff, but it isn't really possible.

The minimum size of a generation ship is a function of how much of it can be made self regulating. It's clearly quite a lot larger than any current spacecraft, or even any current self contained but not self sufficient artificial environments, such as aircraft carriers; And it's demonstrably smaller than the planet Earth.

That's a pretty broad bracket.

I am not aware of any good reasons to narrow this guesstimate any further at this time.

As to why we would do it, the answer is the same as to the question of why the Polynesians went looking for more Pacific Islands to settle. Because they could.

Every human society in history has contained a small minority of misfits who wanted to risk it all to go see what's over the horizon - no matter how comfortable they were at home.

Except this ship would cost tens (hundreds?) of trillions in today’s money. This isn’t just some voyagers getting on a ship and sailing away. There is zero return on this trip for any person putting money out for this.

 

[bilby]

Humans have nothing like a generation ship set up on Earth

I disagree. The Austronesian people colonised the Pacific Ocean by this means and handled it just fine for three thousand years before the arrival of fast steamships and radio put a close to their isolated lifestyle.

An island isn't outer space.

There are still some small, isolated human groups with only a couple of hundred individuals.

The Sentinelese people of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean are completely isolated from the rest of humanity, and some estimates put their population as low as fifty. They still retain sufficient sanity to understand that missionaries are best killed on sight.

Isolation from people isn't as much the issue as isolation from the environment itself. Living in a tin can forever, we aren't exactly wired for that. And while we can choose who starts that process, the generations afterwards might not be able to handle it as well. Granted, it would be all they know, so possibly could work.

Just because currently spacecraft are all 'tin cans' with no life other than the astronauts and perhaps a couple of experimental plants or animals, and no room to swing a cat even if one was brought along, doesn't mean that it will always be thus.

Which then leads to the next issue.

"Why are we doing this?! If we turn around now, we can get back to Earth quicker. We're so sick of eating sausage."

A generation ship would likely need an ecosystem, rather than a mere life support system - after all, that's how spaceship Earth has managed to support life for thousands of millions of years without a service call to the maintenance department.

My gawd... hogweed eventually becomes the sustainer of human life in space. The irony.

A generation ship would have to have more in common with a remote island than with the International Space Station.

I can't imagine how many generations we'll need to create a generation ship. In the end, a generation ship's benefit is limited. I mean, other than in the Wall-E sense of things. The commitment to the mission is tenable with each following generation. And I ponder just how large a crew is needed to make it work. The redundancy for the ship equipment would also be needed for the crew, engineers, doctors, mid-level accountants, justice, sanitation engineers, people that know why that blue button keeps blinking all the damn time, botanists, biologists, physicists, chemists, computer experts, someone that can fix musical instruments, educators, and one libertarian to fuck it all up. In general, novels and shows usually have one or two people do all of that stuff, but it isn't really possible.

The minimum size of a generation ship is a function of how much of it can be made self regulating. It's clearly quite a lot larger than any current spacecraft, or even any current self contained but not self sufficient artificial environments, such as aircraft carriers; And it's demonstrably smaller than the planet Earth.

That's a pretty broad bracket.

I am not aware of any good reasons to narrow this guesstimate any further at this time.

As to why we would do it, the answer is the same as to the question of why the Polynesians went looking for more Pacific Islands to settle. Because they could.

Every human society in history has contained a small minority of misfits who wanted to risk it all to go see what's over the horizon - no matter how comfortable they were at home.

Except this ship would cost tens (hundreds?) of trillions in today’s money. This isn’t just some voyagers getting on a ship and sailing away. There is zero return on this trip for any person putting money out for this.

Why would you expect us to spend today's money?

A computer such as the phone I am writing this on would have cost trillions (and been the size of a warehouse) in 1970.

Our ancestors had basically nothing, by modern standards, even if they were hugely wealthy by the standards of their contemporaries. Henry VIII was the richest man in England, and couldn't buy soft toilet paper or a flushing lavatory.

Or descendants are unimaginably rich. They can afford it, if they want it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Star Trek Writers' Guide - for TOS

1. Build your episode on an action-adventure framework. We must reach out, hold and entertaina mass audience of some 20.,000,000 people or we simply don't stay on the air.
2. Tell your story about people, not about science and gadgetry. Joe Friday doesn't stop to explain the mechanics of his .38 before he uses it; Kildare never did a monologue about the theory of anesthetics; Matt Dillon never identifies and discusses the breed of his horse before he rides off on it.
3. Keep in mind that science fiction is not a separate field of literature with rules of its own, but, indeed, needs the same ingredients as any story -- including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivitation, you know the list.
4. Then, with that firm foundation established, interweave in it any statement to be made about man, society and so on. Yes, we want you to have something to say, but say it entertainingly as you do on any other show. We don't need essays, however brilliant.
5. Remember always that STAR TREK is never fantasy; whatever happens, no matter how unusual or bizarre, must have some basis in either fact or theory and stay true to that premise (don't give the enemy Starflight capability and then have them engage our vessel with grappling hooks and drawn swords.)
6. Don't try to tell a story about whole civilizations. We've never yet been able to get a usable story from a writer who began... "I see the strange civilization which...".
7. Stop worrying about not being a scientist. How many cowboys, police officers and doctors wrote westerns, detective and hospital shows?

TNG-WritersDirectorsGuide.pdf For ST:TNG -- it isn't OCRed, unlike the TOS one.

BELIEVABILITY IS EVERYTHING. IT IS THE MOST ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF ANY STAR TREK STORY.

If you're in doubt about a scene, you can apply this simple test: "Would I believe this if it was occurring today on the bridge of the battleship Missouri?" Technology aside, if you wouldn't believe the essential story happening in the Twentieth Century, then our audience probably won't believe it in the Twenty-Fourth.

Star Trek is fairly soft sci-fi. There is quite a range, from stories where the technology is pretty much irrelevant to stuff like Robert L. Forward's where he's quite careful to get the numbers right and details will often be in an appendix. Or consider the Honorverse novels by David Weber--the basic tech is hand-waved but he's fairly careful with the numbers--you see plenty of math in the discussions. (There is a fundamental goof in his stories--all his math is Newtonian. At the start of the series that didn't really matter, but by now that makes the numbers substantially off.)

 

[steve_bank]

There is one more ST guideline, women in short skirts and push up pointy bras.

In an interview Roddenberry said his original vision of Capt Kirk was a red blooded American male roaming the galaxy n search of a piece of ass, his words.

Using an old term, ST had a lot of 'cheesecake'.

 

[lpetrich]

Grading SF for Realism - Kheper -- it ranges from present-day tech to not much more than fantasy.

I remember when Lee Correy's "Shuttle Down" appeared in Analog Science Fiction. I wondered what it was doing there, since it was all present-day technology. But it was advanced present-day tech, and the story explored the implications of that tech. In the story, a Space Shuttle takes off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, and it has to land in Easter Island. This leads to a bureaucratic nightmare, because of a shortage of documents indicating ownership of the downed spaceplane.

From that grading site, from hard to soft:

• Present-day tech: Cutting edge Present Day Tech, some developments and speculation, but nothing major that has not been attained today (so no AI). Basic space exploration, very near future.
• Ultra hard (diamond hard): Plausible developments of contemporary technologies – AI, Constrained Nanotech, DNI, Interplanetary colonisation, Genetically engineered lifeforms. Nothing that conflicts with the laws of physics, chemistry, biology etc as currently understood.
• Very hard: Plausible developments of provocative contemporary ideas, bot nothing that conflicts with the known laws of physics, information theory, etc – Assembler Nanotech, Nano-Goo, Uploads, Interstellar colonisation, Relativistic ships, vacuum-adapted life.
• Plausibly hard: The above but with the addition of some very speculative themes, some of which may well turn out to be impossible, others may be possible. Requires some modification of current understanding, but nothing that is logically impossible, or has been conclusively proved to be impossible (so no FTL without time travel) – Wormholes, Reactionless Drive, Sub-nanotech (Femto-, Plank, etc), Domain Walls, exotic matter, FTL drive with time travel, etc.
• Firm: As realistic as the above categories were it not for unrealistic/impossible plot devices (e.g. FTL without time travel paradoxes), although these are kept to a minimum as much as possible.
• Medium: Similar to the above but with a larger number of unrealistic plot devices; e.g. FTL without real explanation (ore with pseudo-explanation), alien biota in some instances very similar to terragen life, psionics, a great many alien civilizations. However still preserves plot and worldbuilding consistency, and the science is good and consistent.
• Soft: A number of unscientific themes – e.g. aliens as anthropomorphic “furries”, handwavium disintegrator guns, Alien Cultures and psychology all extremely uniform, and so on. However, still retains story consistency.
• Very soft: As above but either even more unscientific elements (humanoid of the week, lifeless planets with beathable atmosphere, etc), and story with less consistency.
• Mushy soft: As above but even more unscientific (alien races never before encountered speak perfect English without a translator, animals too large to stand in Earth gravity (Godzilla), weapons that make energy beams without putting energy in, interstellar travel without FTL or centuries long voyage, mutants with super energy powers, etc).

 

[lpetrich]

Most visual-media sf they rate as well on the soft side:

• Soft: Various TV series: Babylon 5, Farscape, Andromeda, Matrix, StarGate for the most part.
• Very soft: Various TV and movie series; for the most part the Star Trek Canon and Star Wars Canon.
• Mushy soft: Godzilla, Comic Book Superheros, badly written TV sci fi, elements of some franchises.

In their table, all of their harder-SF examples are in print media. Isaac Asimov's Foundation series they rate as firm and Frank Herbert's Dune series as medium.

But some visual-media SF has been well on the hard side. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is ultra hard except for the ET's, which are plausibly hard, and "The Martian" is also ultra hard, as far as I can tell about it. "Interstellar" is plausibly hard.

-

I must note that here is another hard-soft dimension worth mentioning: nuts and bolts / technology -- psychological / sociological

 

[Swammerdami]

I've been reading this thread, because I need the answers to complete my sci-fi epic involving an intergalactic civilization.
...
With 0.01 c we should be able to travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other in just several million years. And thoroughly explore the galaxy in about twice that time, assuming it takes 1000 years or so to set up a system's power stations.

You may be overthinking the "problem". There is no need to spell out details of how something works in a good sci-fi story. In fact, too many details can detract from the story.

Real-world constraints, e.g. a 0.01c top speed, make the achievements of the inter-galactic civilization all the more grandiose and impressive.

Appeal to a mass audience is not a priority; indeed the odds are millions-to-one against on the book ever being written.

My spy thriller Plutonium in Pattaya has a slightly higher chance of completion. But my enthusiasm for that project waned as I saw some of my far-fetched plot twists effected in the real world.

There is one more ST guideline, women in short skirts and push up pointy bras.

In an interview Roddenberry said his original vision of Capt Kirk was a red blooded American male roaming the galaxy n search of a piece of ass, his words.

Using an old term, ST had a lot of 'cheesecake'.

I'm afraid that my Plutonium in Pattaya may overdo the "cheesecake" a bit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Most visual-media sf they rate as well on the soft side:

• Soft: Various TV series: Babylon 5, Farscape, Andromeda, Matrix, StarGate for the most part.
• Very soft: Various TV and movie series; for the most part the Star Trek Canon and Star Wars Canon.
• Mushy soft: Godzilla, Comic Book Superheros, badly written TV sci fi, elements of some franchises.

In their table, all of their harder-SF examples are in print media. Isaac Asimov's Foundation series they rate as firm and Frank Herbert's Dune series as medium.

But some visual-media SF has been well on the hard side. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is ultra hard except for the ET's, which are plausibly hard, and "The Martian" is also ultra hard, as far as I can tell about it. "Interstellar" is plausibly hard.

-

I must note that here is another hard-soft dimension worth mentioning: nuts and bolts / technology -- psychological / sociological

I wouldn't call The Martian as ultra-hard--the storm that triggered the whole thing is definitely wrong. (The author knew it when he wrote it--he needed it for the story.)

 

[steve_bank]

I was a regular reader of Analog.

 

[AdamWho]

We have discussed this previously in depth.

The bottom line is that you cannot carry enough energy to get anywhere useful in human-scale times.

Gathering energy on the way simply isn't enough.

Human beings (as human beings) are not going to colonize any other solar system. Human beings will go extinct on Earth, not even having permanent sustainable colonies in the solar system.

****

The more interesting problem is that people REALLY believe in a star-trek-like future... Their belief is extremely passionate and quasi-religious. These same people are HUGE supporters of science, technology and living rationally.

 

[Bomb#20]

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. - Ernest Rutherford

 

[skepticalbip]

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. - Ernest Rutherford

Yes, Ernest Rutherford died before the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants so maybe he was a bit overly pessimistic about 'future science'.

 

[Bomb#20]

Funny story about that. Rutherford made his moonshine remark in a speech on Sept. 11, 1933. Leo Szilard had his "Doc Brown" moment, when he mentally invented the atomic bomb while crossing a London street, on Sept. 12, 1933.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We have discussed this previously in depth.

The bottom line is that you cannot carry enough energy to get anywhere useful in human-scale times.

Gathering energy on the way simply isn't enough.

Laser-pumped lightsail. No need to carry energy.

I have my doubts about the reliability of splitting the sail for deceleration, but you can send a robotic factory that enters the target system slow enough to brake on it's own, it then builds a laser that can decelerate incoming starships.

Human beings (as human beings) are not going to colonize any other solar system. Human beings will go extinct on Earth, not even having permanent sustainable colonies in the solar system.

1) You think we won't figure out how to extend the human lifespan??

2) Just how strict are you being on "as human beings"? What about upload/travel digitally/download into a new body?

 

[steve_bank]

You could run across the ship and bump into one end, then walk back and do it again. It will also serve as exercise.

What does an advanced space traveling ET call a metal ship filled with humans?

Canned tuna fish.

 

[rjh01]

The Laws Of Thermodynamics would seem to say resources like O2, H20, and human waste can not be recycled indefinitely.

No, they don't say that at all,
Earth has been recycling O2, H20 for hundreds of millions of years.

One other problem. There will be collisions between tiny dust grains and the spacecraft. The energy of these dust grains, at this speed, is huge. They are also almost impossible to detect.

Impossible? just put a flashlight in front of the ship and see reflection.

The dust particles would be very small and hard to spot at a large enough distance to avoid. Remember you will also have the background stars that would be emitting more light than a dust grain.

 

[barbos]

The Laws Of Thermodynamics would seem to say resources like O2, H20, and human waste can not be recycled indefinitely.

No, they don't say that at all,
Earth has been recycling O2, H20 for hundreds of millions of years.

One other problem. There will be collisions between tiny dust grains and the spacecraft. The energy of these dust grains, at this speed, is huge. They are also almost impossible to detect.

Impossible? just put a flashlight in front of the ship and see reflection.

The dust particles would be very small and hard to spot at a large enough distance to avoid. Remember you will also have the background stars that would be emitting more light than a dust grain.

Small particles are perfectly visible, not individual but clouds,
And distance is easily calculable by measuring time to travel back.

 

[Bomb#20]

Laser-pumped lightsail. No need to carry energy.

I have my doubts about the reliability of splitting the sail for deceleration, but you can send a robotic factory that enters the target system slow enough to brake on it's own, it then builds a laser that can decelerate incoming starships.

Human beings (as human beings) are not going to colonize any other solar system. Human beings will go extinct on Earth, not even having permanent sustainable colonies in the solar system.

1) You think we won't figure out how to extend the human lifespan??

2) Just how strict are you being on "as human beings"? What about upload/travel digitally/download into a new body?

For that matter, we can already build artificial hearts, so how long can it be before we know how to build an artificial womb? Your robotic factory can be pre-stocked with a freezer full of in-vitro-fertilized embryos. This way we won't need humans to travel any faster than robots. If it takes 10,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, no big woop, so it takes 10,000 years. If the human race wants interstellar extinction insurance, we must learn patience.

 

[bilby]

Laser-pumped lightsail. No need to carry energy.

I have my doubts about the reliability of splitting the sail for deceleration, but you can send a robotic factory that enters the target system slow enough to brake on it's own, it then builds a laser that can decelerate incoming starships.

Human beings (as human beings) are not going to colonize any other solar system. Human beings will go extinct on Earth, not even having permanent sustainable colonies in the solar system.

1) You think we won't figure out how to extend the human lifespan??

2) Just how strict are you being on "as human beings"? What about upload/travel digitally/download into a new body?

For that matter, we can already build artificial hearts, so how long can it be before we know how to build an artificial womb? Your robotic factory can be pre-stocked with a freezer full of in-vitro-fertilized embryos. This way we won't need humans to travel any faster than robots. If it takes 10,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, no big woop, so it takes 10,000 years. If the human race wants interstellar extinction insurance, we must learn patience.

The problem being that most of the people who dream of humans visiting other stars are really dreaming of themselves visiting other stars.

When the transportation system has the side effect of ensuring that all those who get there are strangers, people's enthusiasm tends to wane.