Comment by davedx
18 days ago
> the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology.
Spoken like someone who's never read Tau Zero
18 days ago
> the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology.
Spoken like someone who's never read Tau Zero
Stephen Baxter's short story "Pilot" is another good one:
https://www.stephen-baxter.com/stories.html#pilot
Nothing about Tau Zero refutes what the parent wrote. It reinforces it.
Plus, even Tau Zero's initial premise is a pipe dream.
> even Tau Zero's initial premise is a pipe dream
You mean Sweden as a world superpower? :P
Have you read the book?
They travel across the known universe in less than the span of a human lifetime.
OP said "tens of thousands of years of travel".
Or are you being deliberately obtuse about relativistic time dilation?
Spoken like someone who’s never read the Relativistic Rocket: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/...
I really find it hard to understand how people confuse science fiction with reality. I love Tau Zero - I first read it over 40 years ago - but it’s fiction, ffs.
Also they have trouble stopping in Tau Zero so they have no choice going further than they planned. It's one of the best sci-fi novels of all time, read it!.
That Bussard Ramjet, though, is thoroughly discredited. It can't possibly work. Hydrogen hydrogen fusion is a terribly slow nuclear reaction and if you had to stop the gas to give it enough time to react, you'd end up stopping the rocket not accelerating it. In fact, the most credible use of that kind of magnetic scoop is as a brake!