Great book that... It is still viable, if you don't consider the scoop as a physical object, using other means to capture the fuel. And, the density of interstellar space varies. You could move through denser areas to gain speed. It doesn't help that we are in a low density bit of the milky way though.
Sadly, the reality is that we may never find a way to make any sort of interstellar travel possible in any useful way. Which may be why no other species has come calling....
From which you make a lot of inferences about the viability of travelling to Mars. We just haven't really tried yet. 12 days is nothing, and in a space craft which might have been the bees knees in its day, but not now.
Because, evolutionarily, that's what would be most likely to kill them, their family and friends. We're stuck with having to work around it.
We forget where we came from at our peril. We are still animals for all we like to think otherwise.
But we can cooperate and the fact we're not living in caves and our own excrement is a sign that we have and do.
But there does need to be an incentive...
Paraphrasing here but we are apes who evolved to throw faeces at leopards and who now hold nuclear weapons at hand, with luck most of us will live through the current crisis and persevere until the next crisis hits us.
Where is everybody? the Fermi Paradox.
One possibility is that high level civilizations are relatively short lived.
Another is Dark Forest hypothesis:
"The dark forest hypothesis is the conjecture that many alien civilizations exist throughout the universe, but they are both silent and hostile, maintaining their undetectability for fear of being destroyed by another hostile and undetected civilization."
In the latter case we better not advertise our existence ...
Jan
One possibility is that high level civilizations are relatively short lived.
Another is Dark Forest hypothesis:
"The dark forest hypothesis is the conjecture that many alien civilizations exist throughout the universe, but they are both silent and hostile, maintaining their undetectability for fear of being destroyed by another hostile and undetected civilization."
In the latter case we better not advertise our existence ...
Jan
All the Clarke posts convinced me to load "The City and the Stars" on the Kobo. Haven't read it decades.
While nowhere near as experienced a consumer of hard science-fi literature as most here, I’m reminded of the San-Ti’s messages “Do not respond”, and later “You are bugs” in the rather captivating and no doubt maddening to some Netflix series.
The Dark Forest Hypothesis was developd earlier this century by Chinese author Liu Cixin.
It's part of a grandiose trilogy (the first volume titled The Three Body Problem) and for me was one of the best SciFi published in decades.
If SciFi is your thing, take a look.
Jan
It's part of a grandiose trilogy (the first volume titled The Three Body Problem) and for me was one of the best SciFi published in decades.
If SciFi is your thing, take a look.
Jan
Any so-called civilization on Mars will need to be underground to escape solar/cosmic radiation, since there is no atmosphere (or magnetic field) to speak of to buffer it.
What about a force field?
In the far future humankind may be able to live on the surface of Mars under a protective bubble.
We'll just have to work around the problem of the prohibitive amount of power required to maintain the "mini magnetosphere"!
Perhaps a giant Tesla coil? 😉
In the far future humankind may be able to live on the surface of Mars under a protective bubble.
We'll just have to work around the problem of the prohibitive amount of power required to maintain the "mini magnetosphere"!
Perhaps a giant Tesla coil? 😉
We have a head start. There is a city somewhere in Canada where they spend most of the time underground in the winter.
