AlienBastard said
What makes you think those technologies can't ever be discovered? You're like a medieval person saying that there is no way humans will on average ever live more than the age of thirty or that a gun that shoots at a rapid fire rate is impossible.
No, that isn't how it works. To change a person's perception of time is a complete and utter science fiction concept, and on the soft level to boot. Not to mention exceptionally detrimental. "Hey we've modified this dude to experience 45 years as if it's only a week."
*Dude forgets to eat for what he thinks is only an hour. Dies of starvation.*
AlienBastard said
A: A country's budget is a widely variable thing. If you mean like NK's budget, i'd say it's pretty plausible seeing that the cost of spaceships as a interstellar society keeps making them would go down.
Cars once were slow moving and expensive, look at how widely used they are now. Technology progresses, the impractical eventually can become practical. Interstellar space travel is no different, it's just that interstellar travel is so far off from now that the challenge only seems unsurmountable. But one day, there will be a way.
Maybe you could say i'm a fool for thinking other wise, but seeing that going by my sense of realistic thought that interstellar travel is likely something centuries away and that the third millennia may focus more on colonization/terraforming of the solar system [where many engineering problems you try your best to make seem impossible just because of "look at this big scary number I calculated!" get sorted out as i'm sure micrometeorites and radiation are both issues that just interplanetary travelers will encounter] before a manned interstellar travel mission to another colony is attempted.
No, I mean like the US's entire military budget. Add in that they wouldn't keep being made. There would be no economic benefit to do so. You would literally be burning money.
There is a VAST difference between cars and starships. A car wouldn't take an absolute minimum of 10.1 years to travel 10 lightyears (At .9c with a 100 gee acceleration)
And no, interplanetary travellers won't have to deal with micrometeorites and radiation, not in the same way. Interstellar travel at relativistic velocities, even slow ones, will not be able to see let alone avoid impacting anything on their route. Out in the void beyond the solar system, there is not enough light to reflect of something small, let alone while you're travelling at relativistic velocities. In fact. If travelling at .2c you will have 4/5ths of a second to notice it before it's destroying you.
AlienBastard said
Where;s your source for that one? Since that would really suck, or maybe be the best thing ever since that means no one actually hears us which means no surprise alien attack that wipes out all of humanity.
But still, if current tech goes half a light year, a better refined beam could go 100x that distance since future space men have future space technology. A guy from the 1850's alone only had the telegram, nowadays you got the ability to call someone from India daily.
Woops. Got it wrong. Actually SETI isn't broadcasting anything, at all. But...
"If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth?
In general, no. Most earthly transmissions are too weak to be found by equipment similar to ours at the distance of even the nearest star. But there are some important exceptions. High-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes) could be detected at distances of tens to hundreds of light-years with a setup similar to our best SETI experiments."
/Source=Seti FAQ
AlienBastard said
So you can't modify the human perception of time to align better with cosmic time scales?
I don't see why. And that's the problem with "100% hard sci-fi" since while you can make some suppositions on the futility of stealth or how spaceships move in space, there's no telling what technologies could be used in the future. It's like a man from the 1600's trying to guess what a rocket to the moon would be like. What clue would you have had of computers or spaces suits/pressurized air or chemical missiles or telephones?
I'd say predicting what is possible is silly, regardless of how much effort you try since you'll always be wrong. Even Kubrick was wrong, and he was trying to make the most scientifically accurate thing he could.
A: No you can't, the human brain simply doesn't work that way.
B: There is no "problem with 100% hard sci-fi" like that. The whole POINT of Hard Scifi is to take only what is known or theoretically possible.
C: "The Monolith" ergo Kubrick wasn't trying to make the most scientifically accurate thing he could :p.
AlienBastard said
430 Kilotons are what some nukes can do, and I am certain that a nuke would do jack all to a spaceship capable of interstellar travel, let alone a micro meteorite. Isue being that you'd need to repair while on the fly, but that's a solvable problem by using regenerating hull.
There's also the possibility of shielding. We already use micrometeorite shields and i'm certain those can be developed that going as fast as 1/5th the speed of light can resist a good deal of micro meteorites. Not to mention, since space is mostly a void how much of a problem will this really even be?
You don't get it do you, at that velocity the micrometeorite isn't generating the 430 kilotons. Your starship is. In truth the energy release would be much much higher. (Based on the starships mass instead of the micrometeorites).
This is not a "solvable problem" You can't make a ship that can resist a relativistic impact, especially when IT is the impactor. And it will be BEYOND simply a problem. Interstellar space is FILLED with stuff, including rogue planets.
AlienBastard said
So nuclear pulse ships unrealistic? Says who?
And even assuming there isn't, there is no reason why it's impossible to make a ship go that fast.
Nuclear pulse ships are not rockets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)#Interstellar_missions
Also as you can see, your nuclear pulse propulsion isn't going to get you to .1c either. Indeed, it will, based off those figures, get you a best possible of 3.3%c
Or if we look at Project Longshot, we get 4.5%c
AlienBastard said
The current rate things go is not how humans always went at. Once it was hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering, the pace could very well slow down again.
Sure it could. If we got bombed back to the stone age. It was hundreds and thousands of years hunting and gathering because people back then would be considered barely functioning morons today.
AlienBastard said
That's why soft sci-fi generally tries having internal consistency, in Dune as strange and bizarre things get the rules stay consistent.
Besides, trying to be hyper realistic about space battles beyond interplanetary age space flight I don't see as remotely possible. Too many unknowns.
Exactly. According to hard science fiction, and science as we understand it today, interstellar trade (except information transmitted) and interstellar warfare simply aren't remotely possible, it'd be literally just throwing money away.
AlienBastard said
You can't predict the future, let alone the technologies used so I see every other tech I claim could exist as purely plausible until proven other wise since sufficiently advanced tech would be in play.
Hell, hard sci-fi I thought was the implications of technologies on society, not about trying to be super accurate to the point where a story is impossible to write. All the famous hard sci-fi authors wrote about pretty crazy shit, and I think that concerning yourself too much with realism limits one's creativity far too much since there's far more unknowns than knowns. Realism in fiction generally is a style more than anything else. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey used its hard sci-fi humans as a way to make the aliens in the movie that far more god-like.
1st Paragraph: You could claim that. But you also wouldn't be writing hard science fiction. You'd be writing soft scifi.
2nd Paragraph: No, Hard Science fiction is defined by strict adherence to known science within the story. Also note that, in fact to my knowledge, not ONE "Hard Scifi Author" has actually ever written 100% hard Scifi. All authors have to make concessions to soft science fiction otherwise yes you are constrained to something nearly impossible to write a story about.
AlienBastard said
So the whole talk of realism in space battles is kinda silly the more I think about it since how the hell can you be realistic about something we have little to know idea about? Calcs and theories?
You take what is known and make the attempt.
In the end it's why pure hard science fiction always fails. It's BORING. And much too hard to actually work with.
It actually becomes massively easier if you just throw out "no FTL" even if everything else was hard scifi removing the no FTL rule vastly widens the scope of your sandbox so to speak.
