Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: What an advanced race would come far to get....
Message-ID: <988@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 00:48:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.988
Posted: Thu Jul 25 00:48:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jul-85 02:04:24 EDT
References: <525@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 44

In article <525@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:

>Besides, there is an underlying fallacy here: the idea that there is such
>a thing as enough living space.  Exponential growth will use up whatever
>space is available, in relatively short order.  So we have a ringworld.
>In a thousand years we will want another (or ten thousand, or a million).
>In thirty to a hundred years, we will want a third.  In fifteen to forty,
>we want a fourth.  After that, we start wanting them frequently.

This itself is a fallacy, on two counts.  As far as humans are concerned,
exponential is characteristic of a certain phase of technological and cultural
development.  Most developed societies today have either slowly growing or
stable populations.  I terms of other races, well, whose to say?  I would
venture to guess, however, that a race which had an unalterable tendency
towards high growth rates would have a hard time developing adequate
technology; too much effort would be going into people starving.

>By the way, interstellar travel (at sub-light speeds) is not as bad as most
>of us have been led to believe (generation ships and such).  Forseeable
>technology will get us about one-tenth the speed of light.  This will get
>us to the nearest star in about forty years.  A long time, but many of
>those who set out will get there.

That's a generation ship.  Very few women are fertile after 40 years.

>A somewhat more problematical technology, the anti-matter drive, will get
>us there at one g if we are willing to expend reaction mass comparable to
>the delivered mass.  That gets us there in about seven years (a bit less
>for the travelers.)  Right now it looks like the biggest problem with this
>drive is producing anti-matter economically (it can already be produced,
>using particle accelerators, it's just fantastically expensive).  There
>are other possibilities, such as lasers, not to mention ideas that haven't
>been thought of yet.

Well, unless you are going to break out of the current laws of physics, it
takes the same amount of energy to get there in a certain time no matter how
you store the power.  You either have to generate it along the way, or produce
it all at the beginning and store it somewhere (and storage isn't necessarily
a problem).  And it's a LOT of energy, all of which you have to get rid of
if you expect to stop when you get there.

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe

"Tom, how am I going to generate that kind of power?  It can't be done!"