
Science-fictional shibboleths - ohjeez
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/12/science-fictional-shibboleths.html
======
MichaelGG
For me, a book should get one free pass on which they can build a plausible,
self-consistent universe. If that one pass is "awesome, friendly AI with near-
perfect dominance over spacetime" (The Culture), well, OK, fine. Just stick to
it, then. (Spoiler: In Look to Windward, the Culture is blamed for some lesser
culture's war, as the Culture did it by accident. This seemed so implausible I
thought it was going to be a plot twist.) -- Yes I know the Culture isn't hard
sci-fi (unless you just assume Minds exist and can do all that stuff), but
it's the most uplifting stuff I've read. A perfect idea of how civilization
should be. It literally affects my mood in a very positive way when I read
them.

But if every other chapter there's some new damn "thing" that doesn't seem to
make sense in-universe then I feel like I'm just being snowed. There was some
book I was reading with new words every other page. Then, on some space ship,
"janitor rats" appear, that are rats, but somehow cybernetically linked to the
ship over time or some such nonsense. For no apparent reason other than to
have cyber rats. Nope.

Greg Egan is the master of making it perfect, holy shit. His books can be a
bit hard to get through. I know I didn't fully understand them, then I found
out he has said that you shouldn't expect to read a book without a pencil and
paper to take notes. Some of the books even have tutorial videos, explaining
his [alternative] physics or such.

~~~
arethuza
Well Banks is careful to point out that the Minds may, as far as we are
concerned, be god-like but they can't predict _everything_ (for various
reasons, including moral qualms about too perfect simulations of individuals
possibly having their own rights) and although they are perfectly capable of
reading the state of meat based "minds" they don't do it as it's taboo (hence
the "Grey Area").

Edit: The _Aritrary_ says in The State of the Art:

 _" I'm the smartest thing for a hundred light years radius, and by a factor
of about a million... but even I can't predict where a snooker ball's going to
end up after more than six collisions."_

~~~
MichaelGG
Yep. But still... starting a longass civil war and not immediately jumping in
to clean it up? I mean I guess it's possible but it certainly makes the
Culture come off as incompetent pricks at a minimum.

~~~
arethuza
It might have been an attempt by Banks to address some of the criticisms of
the Culture - that it was "too good". Also the Culture's revenge attack by
their terror weapon (literally) on the Chel who planned the attack on the
orbital show's how nasty they can be if they think it is justified ("good"
doesn't necessarily, it seems, imply "nice").

------
notahacker
I'm a bit perplexed by his issue with the realism of _futures in which we wear
mini-dresses and three-piece suits, drive gas-burning automobiles (or
hovercars: it 's just a rabbit/smeerp replacement), carry handguns (or
blasters: see rabbit/smeerp), eat the kind of food we eat today, live the kind
of way we live today, and most importantly think the way we think today._

Especially after an article attacking space opera tropes.

Frankly, if the sci-fi of half a century ago had assumed that a decade or two
into the next millennium we'd live in neat little houses on suburban Earth,
don suits to go to work in our (non-flying) car, eat hamburgers and worry more
about humans in other countries than alien empires it would have been
absolutely right.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> had assumed that a decade or two into the next millennium we'd live in neat
> little houses on suburban Earth, don suits to go to work in our (non-flying)
> car

But this is changing, it's not the 1950s any more. By a fifth of the way
through the 21st century, it's quite common that

1) The business attire is often jeans and t-shirt

2) Women go to work almost as much as men

3) The couple in the "neat little houses" may not be married. Or may be the
same gender and married. Or there may just be 1 person there.

4) Smoking is very uncommon

5) The work is sometimes from home, or your job might be moving to somewhere
cheaper like a call-center in India or a factory in China.

7) The local mall is struggling due to online shopping.

8) people don't pre-plan their social engagements like they used to - they're
always in contact with their friends so the era of "I'll meet you in the
cinema lobby at 8" (or bust) is over. In fact the cinema might be netflix and
chill at home.

9) The car might soon be self-driving.

These changes add up over time. This movie from 1981, supposedly set on
Jupiter's moon Io in the late 21st century, has scenes that look very looks
outdated to me, particularly a room full of men smoking:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/)

~~~
notahacker
The point isn't "the world is exactly the same as the 1960s", the point is
that the world is much more similar to that of the 1960s than the early 2000s
depicted in any scifi from that period, _especially_ the scifi written on the
premise that the idea that anyone in half a century's time would still work in
an _office_ and drive a _gasoline powered car_ was desperately unimaginative.

I'm sure there's a lot of subtle-but-significant ways in which society will
have changed by 2065 too (whether influenced by scientific advances or not),
but I'm not convinced that they'll find the idea of characters set in their
time period eating hamburgers nearly as unlikely or amusing as some of the
things we might invent in their place.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Oh sure, people around 1950-70 looked at the pace of change over the last 100
years: from horse and cart and gas lamps to electricity, intercontinental jets
and moon landings and projected in on linearly to moon and Mars colonies in
the next 50 years. And then ... that progression clearly wasn't linear, it
peaked and slowed down after then.

But change hasn't stopped though. It could speed up again. Even if it doesn't,
those Mars colonies and robot asteroid mines are not ruled out just delayed -
they are back on some people's long-term plans now.

------
dkbrk
Naturally this has already been extensively covered by tvtropes, I present the
"Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness" [0]

The author makes some good points about particular types of errors. I would
not, however, call them shibboleths, that word generally refers to something
quite specific and seemingly arbitrary that an in-group uses to identify
itself to others in the know. Also, the idea that sci-fi is not actually sci-
fi unless it's hard sci-fi reeks of No True Scotsman. Some of the author's
examples were far more egregious than others; I would argue that violating
conservation of energy and/or momentum is fundamentally and entirely different
to a particular choice of society or political system such as a
Megacorporation or Empire, In Space!

[0]:
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienc...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness)

~~~
zellyn
Agreed about Empires. It seems uncharacteristically shortsighted to assume
that a couple hundred years of earth history categorically rules out Empire as
a sustainable model of government over all space and time.

------
simonh
On the other hand the 3He thing gave us Moon. The 3He thing may not hold
water, but the film just isn't about that.

Edit: Oh, and don't worry about jeryk-cam, it's very sedately paced in that
respect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_\(film\))

~~~
jerf
Of course, it's a good movie, so no jerky-cam.

Jerky-cam _may_ have once been a stylistic decision, but nowadays is done to
give the illusion of excitement and action without having to actually provide
the action, which is way easier for the movie studio. A frequent "jerky-cam"
complaint I hear is that people don't know what's going on, they don't know
who is fighting who, where it's happening, who's winning... and the reason for
that is that there _is_ no location where it is occurring, there _are_ no
spatial relationships between the combatants, and the action of the fight does
not produce a "winning" or "losing". If you de-jerk the jerky cam, what turns
out to be under the jerkiness is just cinematic mush.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or cynical, I mean that descriptively. Get a
modern jerky-cam action scene into something like VLC or mplayer and step
through it at 20% speed. Seriously, it's worth doing once, if it's easy for
you to acquire the video, as an exercise in media appreciation and education.
What you'll find is almost certainly what I'm describing, there's no "there"
there. It's not that you're "too old" or slow to follow it, it's that there's
_nothing to follow_.

~~~
icebraining
There's a whole subreddit dedicated "de-jerking" such videos:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ImageStabilization/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ImageStabilization/)

Star Trek gets really funny: [http://www.slashfilm.com/star-trek-motion-
stabilized/](http://www.slashfilm.com/star-trek-motion-stabilized/)

------
navbaker
This article seems to be aimed at the Astrophysics PhD-holding crowd. Should
be called "Science-fictional shibboleths for the overly pedantic".

~~~
mcguire
Premises:

1\. " _Upshot: any work of SF that takes 'Lunar 3He mining' as an economic
premise is about as plausible as one that assumes combustion powered by the
release of phlogiston._"

2\. This argument applies to essentially anything requiring space travel. It's
expensive, very delayed, unworkable based on any kind of science as we know
her today, low margin, and generally silly.

Conclusion:

Charlie, as a science fiction reader, has very little reading to do.

* " _Faceless 80 's style corporations ruling entire planets (hint: who handles the externalities?)_" I dunno, who handles the externalities for 2010s-style faceless corporations?

* " _small farming planets (hint: just one ecosystem for a planet?)_ " Yeah, that one's pretty stanky.

* " _the glib dismissal of life support systems in space as trivially easy to maintain_ " If it's not trivial, it's not likely to work very well over any kind of long-term. Any system that requires heroic efforts from superior individuals is going to fail in short order, very likely the _second_ time it is used. Of course, it may fail spectacularly, dramatically, and very entertainingly. But probably not.

* " _political structures based on design patterns proven to be unworkable in the context of any society more modern than the late middle ages_ " Anyone got an example of a political structure _proven_ to be _workable_ in the context of, etc, etc?

* " _AIs that follow the disembodied-brain-in-a-box mode of Hal 9000_ " It's been a while, is that the Berkeley response or John Searle's?

* " _futures in which we wear mini-dresses and three-piece suits, drive gas-burning automobiles (or hovercars: it 's just a rabbit/smeerp replacement), carry handguns (or blasters: see rabbit/smeerp), eat the kind of food we eat today, live the kind of way we live today, and most importantly think the way we think today_" Unfortunately, any use of the term "cache-sex" is verboten and should be expunged from the literature as she is known. The writer of such should be expunged from existence.

Conclusion:

" _Edit: if there 's an entry for your pet shibboleth in the Turkey City
Lexicon don't bother repeating it here—I'm taking familiarity with the
canonical list of cliches as a given._"

Given that most of this article either appears in the canonical list, or ought
to if Sterling and what's-his-name had thought of it, this ending makes the
article delightfully self-negating. Très poste-moderne!

On the other hand, this kind of list of things-I-hate-about-all-of-the-rest-
of-you has been rather done to death; examples in any decent library abound in
much the same way as silverfish. See, por ejemplo, Strunk and White.

4/10\. A good effort, but not extraordinary.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
John Company and VOC manged to rule large parts of the far east.

------
lmm
Eh. It seems weird that you'd object to these things and read fantasy instead,
where the list of things that wouldn't work that way is much longer. Unless
you know a lot about space physics and hardly anything about medieval history?

~~~
jeremysmyth
In writing fantasy, you don't even try to base mechanics on current theory.
Fantasy is predominantly about relationships, where the mechanisms of action
are useful for furthering character colour and the plot but not in themselves
key plot points.

In sci-fi, the mechanisms tend to be at least plausible developments of
current theory. In some cases, they even form the basis of the work rather
than a mere plot point. Compare Greg Egan's oeuvre, where in many cases the
mechanism is the point of the work rather than a plot device.

~~~
mcguire
On the other hand, all of the medieval castles I've seen have holes in the
walls (somewhere high, in the name of security) where one would dump one's
faeces out. Failure to take that in account is an error muchly similar to what
is described here for sci-fi.

------
Paul_S
Most of the time writers just don't care about researching what they are
writing about - this is not limited to sci-fi. Whenever a writer does any sort
of research it's magnificent - see: The Martian. With knowledge readily
available and basic facts easy to establish within seconds there is really no
excuse.

I have to admit I've never dropped a book because of that so maybe writer's
know they don't have to do it.

~~~
icebraining
The Martian author, besides being thoughtful about his research, also used a
master weapon: he published the whole thing online for every nitpicking nerd¹
to criticize and contribute. It's well known that the best way to get an
answer to a question is to confidently give a wrong response.

¹ I say this as a self-identified nitpicking nerd, though I'm too ignorant to
do it properly :)

~~~
Udik
Pity that he ended up writing a novel in which the main character is stranded
on Mars because of an impossible martian storm; then communicates with Earth
by absolutely implausible means (while there were many more obvious, among
which the most classic "SOS" written on the sand); that he survives by growing
potatoes that couldn't possibly germinate, planted in a highly toxic soil, and
raised with a light source that does provide only a small fraction of the
energy required to grow caloric food...

EDIT: I've already got one downvote, hurray! Would the downvoter(s) be kind
enough to point out _why_ and _how_ they disagree with what I've written in
the comment? Plus: at least wait to see what I have to say about Charles
Stross himself and his novel "Glasshouse". :)

~~~
Paul_S
I don't think downvoting is fair but when you criticize it's good to provide
explanations. So when you say it's "absolutely implausible" and it "couldn't
possibly" then you should write why exactly it is so.

------
jarcane
This article honestly reminds me of nothing so much as why I stopped reading
current science-fiction, and why the science-fiction I wrote took more
inspiration from Douglas Adams and DC Comics than anything from the "proper
SF" sphere of the last few decades.

It seems like the whole genre has become the demesne of nitpicky amateur
astrophysicists instead of about humanity through the lens of projection and
symbol as it used to be.

I don't care how "hard" your science is, I care what your book has to say
about humanity, or at least how well it manages to entertain and enlighten.

~~~
osxrand
Check Karl Schroeder, you may find him a refreshing change. His first book is
available to read online at his website
[http://karlschroeder.com](http://karlschroeder.com)

From what you mentioned, it sounds like his books may be right up your alley.

~~~
DennisP
_Lockstep_ is a neat one. They have sublight interstellar travel, but it seems
like FTL because everybody spends most of their time in hibernation, all on
the same schedule.

------
brianolson
A better title would have been "Terribly Non-Scientific Science Fiction
Tropes", still amusing rant though.

Maybe even better is the link at the end to the "Turkey City Lexicon" list of
common failings in SF/F writing (some also general writing pitfalls).
[https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-
fo...](https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-
workshops/)

------
Symmetry
Is there any reason to assume that all types of aneutronic fusion are equally
difficult to achieve? Extrapolating from other sorts of fusion I'd assume that
D-He3 fusion would take much less activation energy than other sorts.

~~~
DennisP
D-T is the easiest, D-D the second easiest and produces He3. So there's really
no reason to mine He3 unless you happen to be orbiting a gas giant with lots
of it handy.

Helion, a fusion startup funded by YCombinator, is working on a D-D/D-He3
reactor, breeding their He3. They say only 6% of the reactor's energy output
would be neutron radiation.

------
csours
I really really like the type of Sci-Fi / Adventure Story where the
protagonist engineers and builds their own world from scratch (or almost) -
see My Side of the Mountain [1], The Game [2], [Conrad Stargard series][3],
Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, etc, etc .

So I really liked the first book in the Safehold Series [4] and I put up with
the atrocious names (Zhasphar Clyntyn?!?!?) and the insipid, trite and self-
congratulatory characters, and even the lead mallet subtlety of religion.

But by God, the series has just worn me out. I was almost screaming at the
last book.

So I guess the shibboleth is the use of Zh in place of J.

Another shibboleth: lack of space suits in Star Trek - so many issue solved
just by wearing space or encounter suits.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain)
(pre-teen)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_the_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_the_Game)
(young adult)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Stargard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Stargard)
(polish)

[4]Not linking to this tripe.

------
clavalle
SF runs the gamut. I enjoy the hardest of the hard science fiction a'la the
Martian but I like a good space opera, too.

Like the author said at the beginning of the article, a lot of SF is about
character (first) and metaphor. If an author has to invent a method for
unspooling pocket dimensions do dump heat into for the sake of the story, so
be it.

------
dnautics
I think boron and lithium aneutronic fission require even higher activation
energies than he-3

------
davidw
From the article that one links to: "Used Furniture"

Yes! That's the one that sets me off the most. I'm not too concerned about
where a book lies along the range of hard sci-fi to space opera as long as
it's a fun read, but I hate books that recycle other stuff too much. The worst
offender here that I can recall was a series of stories that basically copied
the plots from Greek myths and made them into sci-fi stories. I want to say
it's from Frederik Pohl, but I'm not 100%. I also completely agree about the
"space westerns".

------
SideburnsOfDoom
I wanted to see if The Expanse (1) was any good on list.

It was fine until the section on "spaceships with continuous high acceleration
fusion-powered motors or similar that don't glow white-hot"

1)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/)

~~~
Sharlin
Honestly, I was positively giddy when, during the first minutes of _Avatar_ ,
I noticed the huge red-hot radiator panels on the ISV _Venture Star_.

~~~
marssaxman
Yes! I practically giggled when I saw that, because it meant somebody had
cared enough to get it right, and I was therefore much more willing to sit
back and enjoy the rest.

------
jheriko
This is fine, but lots of rubbish here. The second point is especially filled
with science fiction....

General relativity? rest mass? Kinetic energy? These are real terms but the
context here is all wrong...

don't use words you don't understand IMO.

------
megaman22
Interesting, I've seen this reach the front page three or four times in the
last few days, and this is the first time I've seen it get any discussion.

------
toolslive
Are these examples "shibboleths"?

------
api
I love this stuff. I'll quibble with a few things.

(1) Conspiracies

I totally disagree. I find long-lived conspiracies quite believable, but with
the caveat that they must be socially realistic and have plausible operating
principles.

First of all, a long-lived complex conspiracy cannot remain _totally_ secret.
That's not plausible. Something's going to leak. But it can act and/or
distract (disinformation, etc.) so as to limit the damage and exposure brought
about by these leaks. Keep in mind that in today's information overload world
the information might be out there but if it's not clamoring for attention it
will be ignored. When was the last time you Googled the secret initiatory
practices of the Order of the Blahblahblah?

But more importantly: people do not engage in long term coordinated complex
action without motive, and just "eeeevil!!" or even just profit or power are
not sufficient motives to keep people in a coherent "always-cooperate" game
theoretic mode with one another for that long. If power and profit are the
motive then the group will dissolve through internal strife. Other motives are
needed.

A long-lived complex conspiracy therefore rapidly converges with religion or
cult. It must have a Doctrine(tm), an initiation process, some form of
eschatology either real or metaphysical, etc. If it's a really nasty cult-
driven-conspiracy it might employ cult mind control techniques. These as we
know from the real world can be devastatingly effective. Whole massive groups
of people have been convinced to commit suicide (Jonestown), so why couldn't
they be convinced to perpetuate a lasting criminal or "parapolitical"
conspiracy even at risk to themselves and their own personal fortune or power?

A plausible Big Bad X-Files Conspiracy therefore must be a cult and is going
to look and operate like a cult. It's going to have internal cult jargon and
crazy doctrines that will sound shockingly batshit to outsiders but that
internally actually serve as belief-and-language-based social signaling.
(Galactic emperor Xenu, etc.) If it's a conspiracy that lasts longer than a
life span then it must have a doctrine that transcends the personality of its
leadership and some mechanism for transfer of kingship. It's going to have
totally brainwashed True Believers following manipulative and obsessed upper
management for whom the cult is a proxy for their personal ego. It's going to
have some process for both initiating new members and purging itself of
dissent. The later is going to look like the shame-driven practices you see in
manipulative cults in which the dissenter is first shamed and vilified before
being banished or killed.

Profit or power are not sufficient motives, but a "carrot and stick" can be a
part of cult mind control. Membership may have its benefits if the cult is
powerful, rich, or well-connected, and once one has accepted these favors they
are a "made man" indebted to the cult. Blackmail can also play a role. Many
gangs and mafia groups require members to commit a crime or misdeed in order
to join, and revelation of that crime or misdeed can later be dangled as
punishment.

Fundamentally a long-lived conspiracy with coherent goals is going to be a
cult that operates a lot like the mafia. In fact it's not uncommon for mafia
like criminal conspiracies to have racial identity doctrines, honor codes, a
romantic image of themselves, and other mythologies that serve at the very
least as social glue. Many began with political goals -- the true Mafia were
if my memory serves me originally a political resistance. Combine that with
some crazy-ass religion or political eschatology and you've got your cigarette
smoking man and his compatriots nailed.

I actually take an opposite tack on conspiracies: while I think the woo-woo
variety of conspiracy theory is woo, I also think there's a kind of faux-
rationalistic over-reaction in skeptic circles that amounts to "coherent group
motive denialism." Conspire just means "to act together," and secrecy through
flat silence or through distraction is definitely possible within certain
realistic bounds. Hell, if nobody wanted to ever be secret we never would have
invented encryption!

Finally though -- it is true that nothing remains the same forever. At some
point one of two things is going to happen: the conspiracy/cult is going to
act in a big way and in so doing both reveal itself and immanentize its
eschaton, or it's going to fade away and dissolve into socioeconomic
background radiation. If the group is strongly motivated the former is more
likely, _especially_ if it feels "the time is nigh" (it has enough power) or
conversely if it feels itself losing power and feels forced to act. Sometimes
the latter is driven by the leadership's need to maintain internal
credibility. If people start doubting then they must escalate. (Some propose
that ISIS is now launching international terror for exactly this reason,
though they are far from secret. But the same principle applies.)

... and remember that end-justifies-the-mean fanatics can be _very very bad_ ,
so we're well into plausible villain territory. If the end justifies the mean
and the ideology provides a moral 'out', people will do insanely evil stuff...
like... I dunno... tell people gas chambers are showers? Open fire on cafes?
Force children to drink poison? Only the author's personal depravity is the
limit to what they might imagine such a group plausibly doing when the chips
are down.

Who knows, maybe that's a big part of the story? What happens when your
dismissed-as-wacko conspiracy nut is proven _dramatically_ "as in breaking
news" correct? Or maybe your conspiracy theorists' investigations actually
prod the group into paranoia-driven action? Such a group is likely more
paranoid than the foil hatters that might chase them.

An alternative plot twist I thought up once for the X-Files and that would fit
into the emerging 'rational fiction' trope is if Mulder discovered that while
(most of) the paranormal stuff wasn't real and the aliens weren't invading...
_the conspiracy that The Smoking Man belonged to believed alien invasion was
nigh_ and was all the more dangerous as a result. The stuff that did turn out
to be real might have a rational (but perhaps still very SF) explanation...
and the conspiracy plot revolves around how its existence has inspired insane
paranoia among an element of our intelligence apparatus who are utterly
convinced it's a sign of impending alien invasion. Think of it as a more
elaborate SF-based version of a comet inspiring a dangerous doomsday cult. The
big finale could have been Mulder now struggling to find a credible way to
reveal the truth about UFOs (which might still have a neat SF edge... von
Neumann probes?) to the world not just for truth's sake but to stop the
impending global-scale Jonestown meltdown of the conspiracy.

(2) World-controlling corporations

I sort of agree and disagree. A world-controlling corporation is plausible but
will have in becoming such a thing become a government. Therefore you have a
similar convergence path here as you do with conspiracy -> long lived
conspiracy -> cult. Corporation -> mega-powerful totalistic corporation ->
nation state.

To become a government requires that the corp evolve new traits like a
national mythology, the adoption of governmental function and ritual, and a
support base in the general population. The latter is important: for this to
happen, someone has to think it's a good idea!

It's not impossible that a corporate entity could undergo such a metamorphosis
while retaining some of its original mega-corp DNA. But it would most
certainly no longer be a corporation in the traditional sense. It would have
some sort of national identity.

The socioeconomic, political, or technological forces that might push a
corporation down this road and lead to it emerging as a government/nation
might be quite interesting. It's not at all implausible given that Congress
has something like a 15% approval rating.

Here's a back story for you: an aggressive Uber-like startup invents an
economically plausible win/win way to shrink the exploding wealth disparity in
developed nations... maybe something based on an innovation in game theory.
But to make it work they need to change a few laws. Fast forward a hundred
years and you have a global socialist state presided over by something that is
now a government but retains the organizational DNA of an Uber-like growth
company. For its brand of game theoretic win/win socialism to keep working it
_must_ meet certain numbers, which leads in practice to some kind of
nutty/weird Keynesianism. ... and of course dissenters are _provably_ (via
game theory) threatening the well being of all.

That's quite plausible and no idiot ball is required.

(3) Space travel

I disagree that routine space travel is implausible, but I do agree that if
you do it and have any _hard SF_ aspirations then you must read up on physics
and orbital mechanics. You've got to make a genuine attempt to make it
physically plausible... unless of course you're going the SF-flavored-fantasy
route of Star Wars in which case that's okay too. In that case it's got to at
least be in-world consistent and not terribly cliche.

I do agree that MacGuffins like He3 are unlikely. Really interesting original
motives for space travel and/or settlement are much better. These could
include necessity (Seveneves), politics (escaping global dystopia), religion
(or desire to freely practice such in a world where that's forbidden), weird
but plausible economics (after two generations of global Japan-style
stagnation, the World Central Bank decides a big space economy would make a
better stimulus package than WWIII and launches a PR effort to sell it, etc.),
a massive discovery that demands a major exploration effort, etc.

One that I've toyed around with is this: that in an almost post-scarcity and
incredibly rich society people might do space travel for the same reason they
climb Everest or try to break deep sea diving records... to have fun and show
off. Implausible today but not implausible in an economy 10X larger or where
technology like reusable spacecraft has geometrically reduced cost. Space
travel and attempts at space settlement could be a _sport_. Think a cross
between extreme mountaineering and Nascar.

------
DannoHung
Speaking of hiding in an asteroid belt: How big and how far apart are the
objects in Saturn's rings? I can't find a discussion of it except for an
oblique mention in Wikipedia's article that they can get up to 2km in size.

~~~
cshimmin
I am interested in your question as well, so I did some digging! According to
wikipedia's article on Saturn's rings [1], the "main rings" are composed
mostly of particles ranging from ~1cm to 10m in size.

Apparently observations of the "F ring" are consistent with particles ranging
from microns to centimeters [2]:

"Comparison of optical depth profiles across the F Ring... indicates that
centimeter-sized particles are the dominant source of opacity in a core ∼ 1km
wide, while the micrometer-sized dust dominates in a much wider “envelope”
that extends inward from the core."

The "E ring" seems to be composed predominantly of micron-sized grains, and is
presumed to be fed by dust coming from Enceladus [3] [4].

I am not an astroplatentary scientist so I had to look up a map of Saturn's
rings [5], apparently the E ring is very diffuse, and F is on the outside of
the visible bands.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#C_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#C_Ring)

[2] -
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00191035929...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001910359290107I)

[3] -
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00191035929...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001910359290131P)

[4] -
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5766/1416.short](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5766/1416.short)

[5] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#/media/File:Sa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#/media/File:Saturn%27s_Rings_PIA03550.jpg)

------
jrcii
I thought this was about the authentication protocol at first. Disturbing
memories of trying to role it out came flooding back.

