{"id":4646,"date":"2012-11-20T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=4646"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"sci-fi-and-space-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/sci-fi-and-space-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Fiction Fact & Fancy: Space Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"sci-fi,<\/a>For some weeks now I\u2019ve been reading articles and blog posts offered up by experienced Sci-Fi authors, learned men of science and even a naval designer concerning the idea that when mankind finally sheds the shackles of planetary dependence and travels seriously in the ether, space travel, and space battles in particular, will have little resemblance to what we see on the big screen today. Sci-Fi novels tend to be less fanciful, but some still draw fire for being too \u201cunrealistic\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The learned men in particular site the laws of physics holding up such ideas as bodies in motion, vectors of thrust and the lack of resistance in the vacuum of space.\u00a0 Others point out that aerial combat craft use air and wings to swoop, dive, roll and dodge during maneuvers.\u00a0 But in space there is no air, so swooping will be all but impossible.\u00a0 The designer also focuses on the vacuum and its terrible anti-pressure effects on structures that float through it. He claims that aircraft carrier sized ships traveling through space are highly unlikely just because of the structural logistics involved.<\/p>\n

This frailty is also used as the reason that close-up broadside battles of huge war craft with fighters weaving in between them is highly unlikely: a single puncture of a hull can result in explosive decompression.\u00a0 And with visibility in space like it is, sneaking up on an enemy will be very hard indeed.\u00a0 The most effective war ship will be the one with the least visibility (small) and the best targeting system to fire upon an enemy from extreme (thus safer) distance.<\/p>\n

Many of these discussions take on the issues of artificial gravity, the deadly radiation in space and the sheer bulk of fuel required to power a space craft of today.\u00a0 There are some workarounds, but by and large \u2013 they claim \u2013 space travel will not be anything like what most sci-fi of the day describes.\u00a0 Taking huge war vessels that float on an ocean and translating them to space just isn\u2019t practical.<\/p>\n

Being a hard-science sci-fi guy, I find myself mentally pumping a fist in the air and thinking, \u201cpreach it brother!\u201d\u00a0 But then I\u2019m stabbed with guilt for being so narrow minded.<\/p>\n

How many times have we as a species done the impossible already? At one point it was established scientific fact that the world was flat and sailing too far from shore would prove disastrous.\u00a0 False! Then science ridiculed people like da Vinci for daring to dream that man could fly.\u00a0 This was absurd! But a few enlightened dreamers proved that false as well and now we routinely travel through our atmosphere and beyond. \u00a0Flying faster than sound: impossible!\u00a0 We recently had a fellow fly faster than sound WITHOUT a ship!<\/p>\n

Now, there are those who are seriously exploring ways to disprove such assumed absolutes as the linear flow of time, traveling faster than the speed of light, and creating and controlling antimatter.<\/p>\n

And then there are the things we do know that we\u2019re not supposed to.\u00a0 Just one example is that there is a fair amount of information detailing aircraft that look suspiciously like flying saucers that have been built and flown \u2013 by the Germans during World War II. Apparently these used a large gyroscope like device operating in a container filled with liquid metal \u2013 similar to mercury \u2013 to produce an anti-gravity field to support the ship without the need for propellers, jets or rockets.\u00a0 Imaginings of conspiracy theorists and crack-pots?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 Do any of us really believe that our government tells us everything it knows? No, I didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

Science fiction authors have often been chastised for their futuristic visions.\u00a0 But in so many cases, those visions came very close to real life a few decades later.\u00a0 At a time when state of the art computers filled a building and possessed the computational and data storage capacity of my current wrist watch, Sci-Fi authors were writing of hand-held devices that would allow the user to access vast stores of knowledge and communicate with people all over the world.\u00a0 It was considered ridiculous at the time \u2013 today iPads and other tablet computers are commonplace.<\/p>\n

Compiling a list of sci-fi turned real life items would be a major undertaking.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure every one of you could come up with a dozen that captured your fancy in fiction then became fact (unless you don\u2019t read sci-fi).\u00a0 That the authors may not have understood exactly how these items worked doesn\u2019t really diminish the astonishing predictions they made.<\/p>\n

There are a great many things, I\u2019m sure, that we don\u2019t know yet. Science that we have yet to discover, things we think we know that we\u2019ve got wrong. When the \u201cah-ha!\u201d moments come, established science changes.<\/p>\n

So, any discussion of \u201cthis is impossible\u201d needs to be tempered with the knowledge that we do the impossible all the time.\u00a0 Write it the way you feel it.\u00a0 Who knows, you may be the next Isaac Asimov, A.C. Clarke or Ben Bova.<\/p>\n

Others in this Series:<\/h2>\n

Science Fiction Fact & Fancy: Space Travel
\nScience Fiction Fact & Fancy: Propulsion-Engines
\n<\/a>Science Fiction Fact & Fancy: Propulsion-Exotic<\/a>
\nSpace: A Really Dangerous Place to Live<\/a>
\nScience Fiction Fact & Fancy: Navigation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some weeks now I’ve been reading articles and blog posts offered up by experienced Sci-Fi authors, learned men of science and even a naval designer concerning the idea that when mankind finally sheds the shackles of planetary dependence and travels seriously in the ether, space travel, and space battles in particular, will have little … Continue reading “Science Fiction Fact & Fancy: Space Travel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-4646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muse","tag-scifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4646"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21142,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions\/21142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}