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Where did all the starships go?

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Re: Where did all the starships go?

#261

Post by lukan »

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…

"But detective stories don't work if your world isn't grounded in something real."

No, it just has to be grounded in something consistent and if the book starts by explaining the mechanics of the world(or is in a world with known mechanics), a detective story very well can work.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#262

Post by lukan »

jacquesm wrote: post #257
vanviegen wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genetically engineering and then riding a dragon actually sounds easy in comparison to creating FTL travel.

It's not FTL that will get you to the stars. It's patience, eco systems, hibernation and radiation shielding.

Or building a very big spaceship and have generations live on it until they reach the end of the journey.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#263

Post by deaux »

WalterBright wrote: post #135
krapp wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why try to cross an ocean when everything we could want is across the river? That "river" is still vast and nothing we want is on the other side. >1. The idea that Terran life is toxic and must not be allowed on other planets in the solar system. It's less the idea that Terran life is toxic and more that we're still hoping to find some forms of primitive life elsewhere in the solar system, and don't want those effor…

> nothing we want is on the other side Wow. > You decided the rest of the solar system is dead, not the scientific community. The odds are heavily stacked against other life existing, and get worse with every probe. Of course, nobody can prove there is no other life. And it's not very credible that Terran life will out-compete locally evolved life. And the idea that preserving some slime mold on Pluto justifies us co…

Musk said in 2019 that Epstein was “obviously a creep” and claimed that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.”

Hmm..

> “Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for,”

Hmm..

> “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit?”

Hmm..

> “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”

Hmm..

> The emails between the two moguls come years after Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.

Yup, sounds like a "better reason" to me.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#264

Post by namanyayg »

maximilianthe1 wrote: post #251
jaywcarman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. > >This makes for more epic story telling though. I've seen sci-fi stories span eons due to the vast distances limited by speed. Even at light speed it still takes a huge amount o…

Also great on the same topic - The Forever War by Joe Holdeman[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War

This one messed me up. I couldn't put it down and finished it in one sitting.

I haven't read many military books, but to me this book is the perfect demonstration of the ultimate futility of war.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#265

Post by satvikpendem »

bot403 wrote: post #66
chasil wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Interstellar space is also hostile to life, and any life present at the destination will not use the same DNA coding for protein (if gene expression even works that way). We also do…

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.

> Visiting remote planets is as unlikely as riding a dragon

No, because one is theoretically impossible while the other is theoretically possible.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#266

Post by noosphr »

johngossman wrote: post #90

I speculate that a lot of sci-fi reflects the cutting edge of science and technology at the time it is written. For well over a century a lot of that frontier was transportation: and we got "Around the World in 80 Days" and "20000 Leagues under the Sea" and then a lot of books about space. We also got "Canticle for Leibowitz" and other post-apocalyptic books out of the age when nuclear weapons and energy was top of m…

My favourite part of a Canticle for Leibowitz is the manual auto regressive model the old monk is using to recover damaged books. I remember reading the gpt2 paper and thinking hang on...

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#267

Post by jacquesm »

lukan wrote: post #262
jacquesm wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not FTL that will get you to the stars. It's patience, eco systems, hibernation and radiation shielding.

Or building a very big spaceship and have generations live on it until they reach the end of the journey.

Hence eco-systems, yes. But that's probably a harder problem than radiation shielding + hibernation. You'd still need the radiation shielding but it would be far, far more of it (because non-local).

These are interesting problems to think about, right now they are solidly SF but dragons are and always will be fantasy because physics says they can't exist in the way they are described. But you can't 100% rule out that one day descendants of humanity will visit the stars in person, assuming we don't blow ourselves up first.

That's one of the main reasons I dislike Musk so much: he takes people motivated by positive dreams (a clean planet, off-world travel and living) and then subverts their energy for grift. But 'DOGE' has shown the world who he really is, the mask is off now and anybody still empowering that asshole is co-responsible.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#268

Post by klez »

coldtea wrote: post #177
davedx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Spoken like someone who's never read Tau Zero

Nothing about Tau Zero refutes what the parent wrote. It reinforces it. Plus, even Tau Zero's initial premise is a pipe dream.

> even Tau Zero's initial premise is a pipe dream

You mean Sweden as a world superpower? :P

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#270

Post by jimnotgym »

WJW wrote: post #116
Rodeoclash wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laser accelerate a lightweight probe, probe lands on alien planet and self replicates a receiver and basic robot body. Send mind in the form of information at speed of light and download into robot body. Something roughly along these lines was believable enough for the Altered Carbon universe.

So what? Dilithium + antimatter + magic space warping was enough for the Star Trek universe. The sky is the limit for science fiction. Just in that first paragraph: - How do you stop at the other end? There won't be a large laser array at the receiving end and a laser probe will not have enough stored energy to decelerate itself. - How exactly do you download a mind to be transmitted? We can't do it right now to be s…

It is very unlikely indeed, because we are not trying. We have a world set up so as to allow a few people to accrue wealth they couldn't possibly need, by impoverishing everyone else. Where are they going to make money out of this?
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