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Where did all the starships go?

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Re: Where did all the starships go?

#191

Post by Dylan16807 »

coldtea wrote: post #186
jfengel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to break the speed of light to get to the stars. Time dilation and space contraction mean that you can get there in as little time as you desire. Everyone you knew on earth would be dead by the time you got back, but if it's just about you, the speed of light is no limitation at all. (The rocket equation, however, presents stupendous engineering challenges.)

> but if it's just about you, the speed of light is no limitation at all It's a huge limitation, even just getting propelled to "big enough speed", say 1/10 the speed of light. We barely do 1/1500 the speed of light, in unmanned probes, and only because we sling shot on Solar gravity, not as propulsion or anything, and at 1400 o Celcius, plus deadly radiation, not to mention any micro-meteor as big as a particle of d…

> It's a huge limitation, even just getting propelled to "big enough speed", say 1/10 the speed of light.

If you can't even get up to 1/10 the speed of light, then you wish the speed of light was a huge limitation, but it's actually not affecting you at all.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#192

Post by problynought »

delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

Starships are a boring transport layer, implementation detail.

Being a part of a Q continuum, a disembodied consciousness that can appear wherever whenever, while still retaining a memory/sense of "self" is a far more interesting a dream.

Starships titillate people who tinker with machines. Not very optimistic if we are dragging along service jobs to explore the cosmos.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#193

Post by andrewflnr »

WJW wrote: post #89
dboreham wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably these are equally likely because you could build a DNA-printer and thereby create a dragon of some sort (not sure if it could have fully functional fire breathing though)?

Dragons are physically impossible in many more ways than the firebreathing. For one, things that large would probably struggle to fly. We can make larger things fly, but have to cheat using jet (or rocket!) engines to generate incredible thrust in ways not typically accessible to living beings.

That's ok, we just need to put them on the moon or somewhere else with lighter gravity.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#194

Post by coldtea »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #191
coldtea wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if it's just about you, the speed of light is no limitation at all It's a huge limitation, even just getting propelled to "big enough speed", say 1/10 the speed of light. We barely do 1/1500 the speed of light, in unmanned probes, and only because we sling shot on Solar gravity, not as propulsion or anything, and at 1400 o Celcius, plus deadly radiation, not to mention any micro-meteor as big as a particle of d…

> It's a huge limitation, even just getting propelled to "big enough speed", say 1/10 the speed of light. If you can't even get up to 1/10 the speed of light, then you wish the speed of light was a huge limitation, but it's actually not affecting you at all.

If the point argued is solely "the speed of light is a huge limitation" (and not: "getting anywhere near the speed of light is a big issue"), I'd say accepting that "even basic much lesser speed is a huge problem" is hardly a refutation of that. Nor is it an argument towards the feasibility of the actual feat being discussed (interstellar travel).

I guess you're technically correct though: the speed of light is not an issue, if 1/10th the speed of light is already unachievable.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#195

Post by Dylan16807 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #174
nephihaha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe we already have the resources to colonise the Moon and maybe Mars right now. There would have to be considerable R&D, and willpower, and it would be very expensive but I think it is within our powers. Humans would have to live underground and deal with dust, maybe microbes in the case of Mars, but we could do it. The spaceships to go to Mars would have to be big but they could more easily be built on the Mo…

It's easy if you can build some kind of machine like what Eric Drexler talked about that could manufacture absolutely everything. Otherwise it's impossible. The best hope for that is to send the one thing to Mars that people absolutely refuse to send to Mars which is bacteria and yeast and microbes. That could be a synthetic biology platform that could make pretty much all the molecules you need and then you assemble…

We could send ten thousand workshop machines, a thousand huge forges and presses and reactors, and enough people to run them and all the farms and chemical vats they use those machines to build. Is that not enough manufacturing capability?

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#196

Post by pfdietz »

watwut wrote: post #104
flohofwoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is unfortunately true, but also just illustrates how far science-fiction has fallen - not sure when it started but I guess Star Wars played an important role to remove the 'science' from 'science-fiction'.

I suggest you rewatch star trek. Plot and complexity wise, they are basically childrend stories plus technobable.

Maybe if we reverse the polarity of the plot holes it will make more sense.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#197

Post by Frotag »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #185
squeaky-clean wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science Fiction doesn't have to be fantasy, it can be speculative. But if your setting or plot relies on something we know to be scientifically untrue, and you don't put some effort into explaining why it somehow works in your setting, it's fantasy and not speculative. Someone like Asimov never considered his books to be fantasy and that he could just insert whatever he wanted with no justification. In fact, he never…

> But if your setting or plot relies on something we know to be scientifically untrue, and you don't put some effort into explaining why it somehow works in your setting, it's fantasy and not speculative. Agreed but only because "some effort" could be as little as a single paragraph. > But detective stories don't work if your world isn't grounded in something real. Otherwise the reader can't reasonably build their ow…

> No need for "serious justification" unless you're trying to pull it out of nowhere halfway through the plot. If it's there from the start, there's no problem.

Yeah I think most readers care more about consistency than realism. Being completely realistic makes consistency easy but a harder sell in terms of entertainment.

Maybe one way to view consistency is modelling the story world as a network of criss-crossing character threads. Where one axis is time and the other(s) are uh something? Anyways, consistency is how predictable (smooth / linear) the thread is. We follow the main character's thread pretty closely so that thread is allowed to suddenly curve (plot twist) without risk of losing the reader. We only catch glimpses of the supporting cast / antagonist so those have to be either predictable or the narrator has to backtrack and reveal any twists where necessary. And maybe how intricate yet well-behaved this network appears is what gives the feeling of stories coming alive. Or maybe I'm just on too much caffeine and ranting.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#199

Post by [deleted] »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #84
bot403 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure your point. It's fiction. Are we closer to finding dragons, faeries, or magic? Visiting remote planets is as unlikely as riding a dragon. But both make for great stories.

Science Fiction doesn't have to be fantasy, it can be speculative. But if your setting or plot relies on something we know to be scientifically untrue, and you don't put some effort into explaining why it somehow works in your setting, it's fantasy and not speculative. Someone like Asimov never considered his books to be fantasy and that he could just insert whatever he wanted with no justification. In fact, he never…

[deleted]

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#200

Post by PaulHoule »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #195
PaulHoule wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy if you can build some kind of machine like what Eric Drexler talked about that could manufacture absolutely everything. Otherwise it's impossible. The best hope for that is to send the one thing to Mars that people absolutely refuse to send to Mars which is bacteria and yeast and microbes. That could be a synthetic biology platform that could make pretty much all the molecules you need and then you assemble…

We could send ten thousand workshop machines, a thousand huge forges and presses and reactors, and enough people to run them and all the farms and chemical vats they use those machines to build. Is that not enough manufacturing capability?

And that takes, what, a million of those "Starships?" To be plausible you have to be able to get it a lot smaller than that. If you can fit it into someone's hand the rocketry gets to be trivial.
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