Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michel on June 19, 2012 at 9:19am

No matter when we launch the first interstellar probe, it’ll take a long time to reach its destination. Which means it’s quite plausible that we’ll later invent a newer, faster interstellar probe that gets to the star even sooner, with more modern equipment. Which raises the question of why we even bothered to launch that first probe.

Hoping the faster second crew will stop and give a lift to the first one when they pass them on their way.

Permalink Reply by Davy on June 22, 2012 at 11:42am

I have read stories when I was but knee high to a grasshopper where man was travelling to colonies on Mars and Venus and mining the asteroids from the late 1980's and later. As the years rolled by the stories were set in later and later time periods in the future. 

It is that vision of travelling between the stars that lures us on and the story tellers are tempting and teasing us so that strive that little bit harder to make a dream a reality.

@Michel.

That is a very interesting thought what happens when a ship after century long voyage finally arrives at its destination only to find that the planet they were to colonise has been already colonised for the past two or so years by another colony ship that blasted out of the solar system fifty years after they blasted out into the interstellar void.

It can be tragic or it could be comic depending on the point of view of the story teller. 

Permalink Reply by Michel on June 22, 2012 at 12:49pm

During the first spacecraft's century-long voyage, the second faster ship would have to actually pass them at some point. I'm sure there must be a Star Trek episode with this idea.

Permalink Reply by Davy on June 22, 2012 at 11:45am

Well starve the bloody lizards, don't that ruin your day, now!

Permalink Reply by doone on June 22, 2012 at 12:55pm

"Far Centaurus" (1944), short story by A. E. van Vogt published in the collection Destination: Universe! (1952). A crew of Terran explorers who have been hibernating through a centuries-long voyage to Alpha Centauri discover on arrival that their technology has been radically superseded: Humanity has arrived at the Alphan planetPelham via superluminal travel long before them, and has long forgotten about them and their primitive mission (compare Comics: Guardians of the Galaxy below). The travelers must overcome their childlike naïveté to cope with the near Godlike human civilization that has evolved in their absence — a good example of the "quasimessianic ... transcendental omnipotence" with which van Vogt often furnishes his protagonists in order to generate a sense of wonder in his tales

 

It is a great story, they cold sleep for 500 years and find out that the planet has 1 billion people because someone invented a FTL ship 100 years after they left.  They are given a pension by the colonists and the planets were named after them = some consolation.

Permalink Reply by doone on June 22, 2012 at 12:57pm

Remembering ‘Far Centaurus’

by PAUL GILSTER on NOVEMBER 17, 2004

Although it originally ran in the January, 1944 issue of Astounding, I first ran into A.E. Van Vogt’s “Far Centaurus” in a collection of short stories called Destination: Universe(New York: Signet Books, 1952). It would be hard today to re-create the power of the story’s opening, so imbued have we become with reality-stretching concepts, but “Far Centaurus” remains the ultimate illustration of the starship paradox: why send a slow ship when a faster one will surely be built that will one day overtake it?

Van Vogt’s crew arrives in Alpha Centauri space only to find that there is an inhabited planetary system waiting for them, one settled long after their departure from Earth by the much faster ships that were built later. The dialogue is a bit bumpy and the science occasionally awry (van Vogt seems to think there are four, rather than three Centauri stars, for example), but the story has retained its power to this day.

Image: The first paperback edition of Destination: Universe. Although “Far Centaurus” leads off the collection, the book is filled with other worthwhile stories, most of them from Astounding. They include “The Enchanted Village,” “A Can of Paint,” “The Monster” and “Dormant.” The cover of this 1952 edition was by Stanley Meltztoff.

Permalink Reply by Michel on June 22, 2012 at 1:08pm

the starship paradox: why send a slow ship when a faster one will surely be built that will one day overtake it?

Because the people who launch the first ship can't be sure a second faster one will be built and they can't wait any longer. And they figure the hypothetical faster ship would give them a lift on their way.

The second faster ship is built because they also can't wait for the first ship's report.

It's not a paradox if you factor-in impatience.

Permalink Reply by Davy on June 22, 2012 at 3:43pm

But it is a bit like aircraft development had they waited for jet engines before building aircraft then we would be just beginning to build comet passenger aircraft now not back in the 50's. Kingsford-Smith flew across the pacific ocean and Alcock and Brown flew across the Atlantic ocean. Both were achieved in, even by 50's aircraft building technology, flimsy. Yet they did it! Why? To prove that it is possible to achieve trans-oceanic flight. 

This would be the same with interstellar voyages, proof of concept, but with the possibility that a better faster drive could be invented the year after they put the pedal to the metal and roared out of the solar system bound for the stars. 

The faster ship were it propelled by a star drive of any description would overtake the slower craft but would not see them more so if their drive was FTL. At FTL speeds they would not see them because the EM spectrum would be that far red-shifted  to be nigh on useless for gaining information from it. When they had pass said slow ship they still would not see because the EM spectrum reflected and radiated by it would not reach the faster craft as it would have shifted co-ordinates in space faster than C. Once they had passed the slow space ship blue shift kicks in and once again the EM spectrum is shifted into the blue end of the spectrum same thing would happen as in the red-shift. 

In Space the EM spectrum is the information highway!

That is the way I think that it may happen but then again it could be something more exotic that prevents the faster ship seeing the slower ship.

We'll never know till the event happens, Hey!

Permalink Reply by Michel on June 22, 2012 at 4:18pm

Good, decent and moral future people could target their FTL craft to the location of the ancient ship. They would sacrifice some of their own time to bring the slows up to speed, so to speak. Then move on from there.

Permalink Reply by Davy on June 22, 2012 at 5:18pm

Yes! They could target the area where the slow ship may possibly be by their calculations.

But here is the rub! The slow ship will definitely be faster than the voyager space craft that are now just entering the transition region between the heliosphere and interstellar space proper after 30 odd years of flight. 

So let say they have the energy/mass to hike them along at speed they hit the transition region within six months, if memory serves me right it takes a radio signal 36 hours to travel from voyager to the Goldstone deep space antennae. 

Now they launch the FTL drive ship five years after the slower model left. Radio signals from the first ship after four years would arrive on Earth  12 days after they were sent but when the FTL launched that would have stretched to fifteen days. Now lets say the ships reports in everyday it position and health of the ship. They would have to assume that there has been no drift in the instrumentation that plots the position  of the first ship. 

Because of uncertainties about drift in the instrumentation and other unforeseen events that  are not picked up by the ship itself in its daily health check bulletin. 

A inconspicuous piece of space rock that banged into it three years ago that moved it off course slightly but its effect accumulated over time but the navigation computer did not recognise the till the error became apparent to it and so nudged the craft back on course means that even though it is on course to intercept the trajectory of the star it is aiming for does not mean that back on Earth they could be able to calculate the position of the first craft so that the FTL could stop within a solar system diameter distance from the first ship. The old needle in the haystack problem.

The other consideration even though the ship has a first generation FTL drive is the mass/ energy aspect because each extra gram of weight increases the energy that has to be used to propel the FTL ship.

SO I doubt they would attempt to find the first ship but later they may specifically send a search and rescue FTL ship to find the first ship.