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Where did all the starships go?

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Re: Where did all the starships go?

#321

Post by nephihaha »

fragmede wrote: post #295
nephihaha wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuralink has various potentials. One of them is that it becomes obligatory or even mandatory... If you don't get it, you'll be accused of being a luddite. It will probably start as a medical tool and progress to there. The problem is that you are giving away access to your mind, one of the last private spaces. That means your thoughts can be stolen (think AI scraping but worse), or advertising put in your dreams. Pe…

> One of them is that it becomes obligatory or even mandatory... Given how smartphones have percolated society, I fear you may have a point, but I think that might be the slippery slope fallacy.

It's a pattern. Technology doesn't always mean something is better. Sometimes it does, but not always.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#322

Post by jacquesm »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #313
jacquesm wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, then it still wouldn't work. Not until you use that other thing to get you to a planet where gravity is low enough that a dragon would be able to take off. The whole power-to-weight and wing-surface-area-to-weight ratio simply does not work. It (barely) works for bats though some of them can be of impressive size. The idea that something the size of a dragon can fly with that size wings on Terra is something that…

I think you're making an awful lot of assumptions there and have failed to provide even ballpark specifications for the thing you're supposedly refuting. Weight seems to be a secondary characteristic related only to size. There are also plenty of examples of "small" dragons in fantasy literature. We've already got examples of dinosaurs that come fairly close to qualifying so I'm sure something vaguely in the ballpark…

Sorry, not going there. The physics of the impossible are not for me to take apart but for you to show. I've postulated ways in which you could get to other solar systems, I don't see anything here that would lead to a dragon as it is commonly described in fiction. Fire spewing, heavier than air, intelligent and willing to let themselves be mounted and directed by humans, that's the bar.

Archaeopteryx would have you for lunch long before you realized that it doesn't spit fire.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#323

Post by dripdry45 »

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

Please don’t rest on Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” trilogy

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#324

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #169
gpm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpha Centauri is only 4.2 light years away. 0.25c is definitely enough to reach it. You could even do a round trip in only your adult years.

A trip there to do… what? There likely won’t be any planet better than the very low bar of Mars for human habitation, in fact maybe even worse due to binary perturbations.

[deleted]

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#325

Post by dripdry45 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #119
mlinhares wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda have the same feeling for music as well, the best phases for metal and punk music are usually when stuff is going to shit. When everything looks bright and good the music just doesn't have the same quality, people are not angry all the time.

> best phases for metal and punk music are usually when stuff is going to shit. Now should be a productive time for music in the US then, and possibly elsewhere if things continue on the same trajectory.

Just like the last time, it’s in the little niche places.

Bandcamp, substack… local bands, probably other places i am too lazy to seek out.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#326

Post by perilunar »

chasil wrote: post #15
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…

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…

> the vast distances to other habitable planets

We won't be crossing interstellar distances to look for habitable planets — we'll do it to mine material to build more of our own habitats, to spread further. We don't need to find planets to live on.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#327

Post by rdtsc »

lukan wrote: post #261
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 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.

It can’t be too different from what people are familiar with. So it has to be consistent with itself and with reality.”It’s like our reality except …” but the except part (faster than light travel, mind reading, time travel, dragons, magic, etc) can’t get arbitrarily complex or unreasonable or the reader will be lost or confused.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#328

Post by doctorhandshake »

chasil wrote: post #246
doctorhandshake wrote: post #10

My theory about this aligns with my theory about the disappearance of ‘futurists’ from the popular conversation - we’re living in science fiction. The future is arriving every day. It no longer feels necessary to speculate about a changed world - you need only look out the door. I say this as someone that still loves (and writes a little) speculative fiction. Just a guess as to what’s happening.

The original "futurists" were Italian, eventually under Mussolini. That is a loaded term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_architecture

In the programming sense one might say it is an ‘overloaded’ term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#329

Post by davedx »

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.

Have you read the book?

They travel across the known universe in less than the span of a human lifetime.

OP said "tens of thousands of years of travel".

Or are you being deliberately obtuse about relativistic time dilation?

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#330

Post by fc417fc802 »

jacquesm wrote: post #322
fc417fc802 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making an awful lot of assumptions there and have failed to provide even ballpark specifications for the thing you're supposedly refuting. Weight seems to be a secondary characteristic related only to size. There are also plenty of examples of "small" dragons in fantasy literature. We've already got examples of dinosaurs that come fairly close to qualifying so I'm sure something vaguely in the ballpark…

Sorry, not going there. The physics of the impossible are not for me to take apart but for you to show. I've postulated ways in which you could get to other solar systems, I don't see anything here that would lead to a dragon as it is commonly described in fiction. Fire spewing, heavier than air, intelligent and willing to let themselves be mounted and directed by humans, that's the bar. Archaeopteryx would have you…

Well you've decided that it's impossible but you certainly haven't convinced me of that fact (neither am I certain that it is possible though).

I'm not even clear what the criteria are. We've got examples in fiction that run the gamut. Even limited to fairly traditional post-Tolkien western high fantasy examples of creatures with a long neck, two wings, a distinct abdomen, and a tail we've still got concrete examples ranging in size from a small lap dog up to larger than a McMansion. Plenty of reasonably canonical examples don't spit fire (although being able to certainly furthers the general vibe). And weight? As I said earlier, that's (imo) solidly in the domain of secondary characteristics.

Semantic arguments aren't any fun (and are largely pointless). Is Pluto a planet or not? Unless it's a technical discussion where the distinction matters for some reason, who cares? What matters is if Pluto fits the pattern that you (ie the people conversing) care about.

Hence my posing the example of a particularly buoyant variety of dragon. I think most people would consider it to fit the pattern well enough but I'm sure there would be at least some disagreement.

Also as long as we're talking about wild far future sci-fi possibilities such as visiting other stars in person then you can't rule out dragons in the form of a wildly advanced, needlessly decadent military technology show piece. Something like a nuclear powered bio engineered cyborg for use as some sort of fighter jet. (Apologies if I just inadvertently ripped off some anime I've never heard of.)

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