Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
Search
An Alternative to the other Star Trek Future
April 20th, 2009
Last week I asked whether or not the Star Trek future was possible, the part of the series that postulates human beings can set aside their prejudices, solve their problems with each other to eradicate poverty and war, and to join together to explore the universe.
Well, that exploration part is very challenging to do the Star Trek way with foreseeable technology.
Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute, describes an alternative in Boldly Going Nowhere for the New York Times.
He says, rightly I think, that while solar system exploration is going to happen and will involve human astronauts and settlements, interstellar voyages seem out of reach for our species without technology and resources far beyond those we have today or can expect to have in the next few centuries, or longer. (This is why for my novels, in which I want to have human characters exploring distant worlds in a few centuries, I do what Star Trek did: bring in some not-so-foreseeable technology.)
So, what is the alternative? How can humans explore worlds orbiting distant stars, according to Shostak?
Telepresence.
The idea is that we send robots. Tiny robots, small enough that they can be sent at some fraction of light speed (Seth suggests 10% is possible). They do the exploring, do the mapping, picture taking, sample analysis, and tell us what those worlds are like in as much detail as their technology permits. Then we — all of us — can virtually explore these worlds. Stellar astronauts would not put on space suits. They would put on virtual reality suits.
Now, the lack of real-time interactivity is a problem with this sort of experience, but if you’re like me, exploring real worlds virtually (e.g., Google Earth) or imaginary worlds (online games like World of Warcraft) can be a lot of fun.
Buzz Aldrin, when he said that science fiction had dampened enthusiasm for the space program, was right in the sense that science fiction teaches us we can have the stars, soon, and we can’t. If human civilization is not so long-lived in the astronomical sense, we never will have them, except for perhaps virtually like this.
I’m an optimist, however, and think we will be around a long time and will develop technology advanced enough to take us to the stars, in one form or another. That might take a while, but we’ll get there if we want to badly enough. I want to badly enough, and I know I am not the only one.
But in the meantime we can play Star Trek virtually, and let that experience inspire more longing.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Mike, do you think nuclear pulse propulsion, either by nuclear fusion or using matter-antimatter as catalist, is so “far fetched”?
those two methods were predicted to be able to reach some 10% and 50% of light speed respectively. And they would be able to carry huge payloads and dozens if not hundred of humans!
Also, while 40-100 years may seem a lot, we dont really need multi-generation starships if we improve any methods for hibernation and the like.
Nuclear pulse propulsion is a possibility, for sure, and probably the only one for interstellar voyaging that is not totally far-fetched. Big problems to make it work, however, with the political ones at the forefront. The biological ones, e.g., hibernation, are also large. I used both of these, and a few other technologies, in Spider Star, so I of course think they’re at least plausible.
I wouldn’t expect this to happen within the next century or even two, however, barring a fundamental change in circumstances here on Earth. People are happy to fund and support space at some low level, but not at the level required to do this business right or quickly.
Finding other intelligent life within ten light years would change things for sure.
Really, I dont know if people would really be interested in tele-presence. It might be good as entertainment. But in space exploration we search fullfilment.
None of us experienced being on the moon. And still, it amazed us when humans got there.
Probes on Mars, no matter how good the quality of photos, movies, or in the future, tele-presence, wont have the impact of humans landing on it.
After all, in some way, what we all really look for is spreading our genes indefinitly.
Having humans on other planets and systems, mean that we or our children can do it in the future, or that at least a minimal part of our genes, (the ones shared by all humans) can spread and immortalize.
Maybe that why we dont have that thrill when seeing probes and bots on other planets.
ps: physics question – we can accelerate little probes to 10% of light speed or more, but how are they decelerated?
forget it, I reread the article. It seems the author suggests creating a big craft (but smaller then it would be necessary to send humans) with hundreds or thousands of microbots. The craft would speed up and down, and then the microbots would be released.