5.6 KiB
[WIP?] [HSF] The wait calculation
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Author: u/DAL82 *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3chl7p/wip_hsf_the_wait_calculation/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-07-07T23:38:14
Post:
I posted this a few months ago in a different sub, I'm looking for input and thoughts. I'm not much of a writer... Thanks for reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation
In the mid 22nd century, suffering from worldwide environmental devastation, a desperate humanity seeks to escape Earth. Two hundred thousand human colonists, and millions of plant and animal samples are frozen for an interstellar journey to seed another planet.
These colonists will sleep, frozen in suspended animation, for thousands of years. Every passenger; bacterium, plant, animal and person has been carefully selected.
Although not as bright as Sol, Barnard's Star has a gas giant larger than Jupiter orbiting at about 2.5AU. This gas giant has two very large moons tidal forces and solar radiation keep them at similar temperature, air-pressure, and air-composition to Earth.
The colonists will travel, frozen in time, for many millennia. They'll awake billions of miles and thousands of years from home. They'll awake in their new home, having spent yesterday on Earth. On Earth, humanity continues it's slow sad decline. Our once mighty species sliding closer to the precipice of extinction. Our cultural, scientific, spiritual, and social achievements are stripped away one by one. The history of us largely lost to time.
The colonists, too, are simply forgotten. They become another distant speck lost in ever-night.
Humans are a clever and resilient animal. Our species has weathered catastrophes before. At first slowly, then very rapidly, humankind bounces back. New culture, new society, and new history replace our lost old.
From the ashes of the old, new science matches, then rapidly surpasses, all previous achievements. We tease untold secrets from the cosmos itself.
The development of faster-than-light engines lead to a new age of exploration and colonization. A large gas giant orbits Barnard's Star, two large moons orbit this giant.
Small research and resource facilities grow into small towns. Small towns and cities become less and less dependent on Earth imports. Over the centuries humanity grows and thrives on these new worlds.
They had been dark for a long time, an indistinguishable speck in the dark. But today they arrive at their new home.
Comments:
u/blockbaven [+2] (14 hours later)
The basic premise is almost a cliche. It's been done over and over.
https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/2d3qco/stories_about_long_sleep_colony_ships_waking_up/
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (an hour later)
I'm confused I see HSF and FTL, why not just make it a faster relativistic engine and a slower one? Have you read the passages through the void?
u/DAL82 [+2] (an hour later)
Sorry, I'm new here. I might've tagged incorrectly.
Is FTL 100% not HSF in this community?
u/failed_novelty [+3] (5 hours later)
HSF is hard sci-fi, which means that the science is good to the best of your knowledge. FTL isn't HSF unless you can demonstrate (or point to a demonstration of) it working in reality.
u/Anderkent [+1] (13 hours later)
HSF is hard sci-fi, which means that the science is good to the best of your knowledge.
Ugh, that's not really true? Like, anti-gravity is fairly common in HSF; we have no science that would support that.
Usually HSF is science fiction where the technology is in focus; soft science fiction is SF where the technology is just background for a story focused about something else. You can still take an impossible technological idea, but as long as you treat it consistently and in enough detail (rather than just handwaving it away), you're writing HSF.
u/FeepingCreature [+3] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (a day later)
This is the problem with using a binary tag to represent a continuum.
u/Chronophilia [+0] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 hours later)
Not necessarily, but you lose a few hardness points for it. If that matters to you.
u/capsless [+0] despiser of hpmor (4 hours later)
ftl isn't hsf in any community, afaik. true, different people draw the line in different places, but generally it's kept to speculative tech vs. possible tech. ftl is, like, proven impossible. if you're willing to allow mistakes in physics, then everything's "hard".
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)
There's multiple levels of hardness.
Lots of people consider level four (one big lie) to be acceptable in hard SF.
u/Soak96 [+1] (22 hours later)
And then there's the really really hard SF - invent an entirely new universe with consistent laws of physics that make "FTL" travel possible.
See Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
See most of Greg Egan's stuff.
u/Soak96 [+1] (a day later)
I was thinking specifically about the "FTL" I guess - everything he writes is hard SF yeah.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
He usually has one impossible idea. The dust theory. Ensemble. Distress. Long Neutrons. Mimosa. ...