Space traders?

[pham]

You seem to encounter the idea of spacefaring traders in sci fi quite a lot. I'm re-reading a non-fiction book by Adrian Berry about interstellar travel ('The Giant Leap') in which he paints the picture of future interstellar flight paid for by big corporations. This will be profitable, he reckons, because of time dilation; i.e because the shipboard travel time is a small fraction of the time that passes on the 'homeworld'. I can't quite work out the logic of this. It might be profitable for the traders, if they hopped from planet to planet trading (as portrayed by Vernor Vinge, Alastair Reynolds) - but they'd need people to trade with, so there'd need to be a diaspora of human colonies throughout the galaxy prior to that, or they'd have no market. And that diaspora would need to have travelled by starships financed somehow.

Can't quite see how it's profitable for an Earth-based corporation either, though. Surely no corporation could be sure it would survive long enough to see a return on its investment in a starship? I guess if the corporation had subsidiaries spread throughout the galaxy, it might make more sense, but to get there you still need the initial investment in starships to set up the galaxy wide subsidiaries? This seems the ultimate long-term investment. Let's face it, it ain't gonna happen with big corporations.

A possible scenario seems to be companies that make a market building starships and mortgaging them to independent traders; but thinking about it further, once they've cleared off into the great beyond, what's the guarantee they'll pay up? Intergalactic police?

Is any government likely to finance a starship project through taxation, when the ultimate result will be to take people away from that governments jurisdiction and thus out of the reach of the taxman? I know we are doomed eventually if we stay on this planet, but are politicians really interested in issues like the long-term survival of the human race, or are they only interested in whether or not they will win the next election?

Is interstellar flight the impossible dream?

[Alexa]

Nowadays, an interstellar flight is almost impossible for most of us. Maybe in about 50 or 100 years it that could be possible. If we go back in time and remember how people lived at the beginning at the century and then look around and see how we live, we realize a lot of progress in science, transport, etc. Remember SpaceShipOne contest ? Its victory changed everything in space travel options.

Let a trader belive he could have some profit and he'll do the rest, on Earth or everywhere in this Universe.

In my opinion, a politician will always think how to win the next election.

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by Alexa

In my opinion, a politician will always think how to win the next election.

And that is ususally all he or she will think about.

[Alexa]

We can always exile them on another planet

Hey, LMA ! We miss you on FC. Everthing is all right ?

[chrispenycate]

To get any apreciable advantage from relativistic time contraction, you need to be travelling at over 90% of the speed of light, for a high percentage of the journey (not just touching the maximum at turnover and starting to deccellerate) With your Bussard ramjet (yes, I'm working on it, promise) on the optimistic premise of a one g accelleration, it'll take a couple of years to get up to this speed, and a couple more to get back down, and even when you got there you’d only be experiencing percentage differences in time ; to get serious reductions like twice or five times, as required for the advantages cited (after all, what good’s “oh, after ten years of travel I’m for minutes thirteen seconds younger than I would otherwise have been“ ?) you need to be over 99%- and’the faster you’re going, the more difficult it is to accellerate more.
And we’re a long way from it ; even using sling shot effects, and very small packages, we’re nudging the 1%c. Not having to lift all our reaction mass out of the Earth’s gravity well help a little; but we’re talking about orders of magnitude here not percentage points.
Now, ask yourself what we can trade over those distances. Information, certainly, though that wouldn’t require living crew. Genetic material, to prevent inbreeding in the colonies, incredibly expensive luxuries for the ridiculously rich; before installing a viable trading network there need to be some major discoveries in basic physics. Not that that is in any way impossible

[Alexa]

We can always dream to have a stargate one day.

We can always exchange food, art, electronics, techonolgy, etc. The first step could be a Moon base. I'm not sure how many of us, we'll be still on Earth that day, but it's not impossible.

[j. d. worthington]

No, not impossible; one never knows what's around the corner in physics. But very unlikely. I had really hoped, growing up, to set foot on another world, or at very least to have taken a trip beyond our atmosphere (well, at least where it's thin enough you can't tell the difference, anyway); but it just doesn't look like that's gonna happen. But in order to make interplanetary travel, let alone interstellar travel, a going concern, we're probably going to need a major revolution in physics, I'm afraid -- not something any of us are likely to see ... but, as you say, one can always dream, and hope. (Boy, would that be neat!)

[Alexa]

We should wait for the evolution of the new company 'The Spaceship company' created by Sir Richard Branson (Founder, Virgin Group of Companies) and Burt Rutan (President, Scaled Composites). Those guys can offer us the big dream.

Here you have some comments from the launch in 2005:

Burt Rutan commented: "I am very excited to have agreed the terms on which we can now move forward to develop the world's-first commercial, passenger-carrying Spaceships. This will truly herald an era of personal spaceflight first described by the visionary science fiction writers of the 1940's and 1950's. Richard and I share a vision that commercially-viable and safe space tourism will provide the foundation for the human colonization of space. I am looking forward, (actually looking way up!) to working together with Richard on this next exciting phase."

Sir Richard Branson added: "I couldn't be more delighted to announce the formation of this joint venture at the biggest private aviation event in the world. Like many millions of people growing up in the Sixties who witnessed the wonder of man walking on the moon - I dreamt that one day I too would make that 'one small step...'! Unfortunately though, over the last three decades, many people gave up hope - luckily people like Burt Rutan never did. His vision has allowed people, like me, to dream again. But even I never dreamed as boy, that one day, I would form, with Burt, the company which will build the world's first commercial passenger spacecraft!"

The Spaceship Company plans to make spaceflight affordable for the masses and to demonstrate the commercial viability of manned space exploration. We are dedicated to reaching that goal with the first generation of spaceship systems developed for routine, scheduled flight operations. Those systems will be environmentally friendly and will include new solutions to optimize both safety and the passenger experience. We expect that as the flight hardware matures, and is operated by competing spaceline companies, many thousands of people will experience the wonder of leaving the earth's atmosphere each year.

See the entire article on:

http://www.scaled.com/news/2005-07-27_branson_rutan_spaceship_company.htm

What do you think about space travel after reading this lines ? Dreams, dreams, dreams ! Every dream can be true if you really believe in it.

[chrispenycate]

Richard Branson? He's my age! (literally; I met him when I was at university, and so was he) He's not going to get much interplanetary travelling done (without the struldbrugs club, at any rate)

But it's interplanetary travel we're getting to here, not interstellar. Within the solar system, developements on our present technology will work; indeed, our present technology would suffice, if barely, and at incredible expense. Unfortunately, apart from Earth, colonisation of the solar system is largely a question of self contained habitats, sealed environments not that different from spaceships in their own right (training grounds for the generation ships to come)
Still, trading is possible: megatonnes of metal against crates of champagne, industrial processes far too dangerous and polluting to be allowed on Earth's surface producing riches to be glided down, exchanged for the luxuries only available on the planet.
Good preparation; but trade between points at most light hours apart isn't the same as centuries of travelling.
I believe. I believed in '69, and have never lost faith, even if I no longer think it will be from the United States that the expansion will come. It will cost fortunes, both in manhours and human life, but the swarming instinct will out.
Possibly even before global warming gives us other priorities; but I suspect that's over optimistic

[j. d. worthington]

While not wishing to pour cold water on the idea -- it just might be possible, and no one could more dearly hope to see this be one of those dreams come true than I -- I'm reminded of the early years of air-flight; the competing companies and the dubs going up in planes and the hideous number of fatalities that almost put the aviation industry in its grave. And this was atmospheric flight! Space is a place where you simply don't have room for mistakes; it's a very unforgiving environment and has no margin for human fallibility or stupidity. Where you might be able to glide a plane down and walk away from a crash, or even be carted off to hospital, it's an entirely different thing when you're out there!

So, while I'd be willing to contribute (if I have money to contribute) to any worthy venture into spaceflight, I'd have to know that they were taking at least reasonable precautions against such things but requiring extremely rigorous training, safety inspection, oversight, etc., etc., etc. to avoid the sorts of disasters we've seen with any new form of transportation, only having to be much, much more careful because of the totally alien environment we're dealing with. A few "cut corners" to save costs can cost untold numbers of lives simply to keep the books temporarily in the black and "worry about tomorrow's fallout later". Go for it, but go for it with a realistic approach of the problems to be overcome, smash the rose-colored spectacles into fodder for kaleidoscopes and take a good, hard look at all that can conceivably go wrong or be improved.

And there's still the simple, basic, problem of distance! And setting up viable colonies, terraforming, how people react when cooped up in small, confined spaces for any length of time, lack of conveniences, initial expenditures, etc. If we're talking interstellar travel, which is the only way to make such a thing viable in the long run, the closest star to us is 4-1/2 light years away; that's a journey of 4-1/2 years at light speed; and, as Chris has noted, we're only approaching 1% of that at best. We're still going to need a new physics to allow us some way around that barrier before it'll be fiscally feasible. Maybe such a thing will happen, but there's been no indication of that (at least, none worth speaking of) so far. To the best of our practical knowledge, c still remains an unbreakable barrier for anything manufactured, whether or no there are naturally occurring particles that violate that barrier. E=mc2 has yet to be overcome, even the maths for such are still hotly debated; let alone any practical demonstration. And even if we should achieve that, we've got decades if not centuries to go before we can put it to practical use.

So, I have to remain sceptical. It's a hard-earned scepticism because, when I was younger, I thought of all kinds of arguments against such thinking but, the more I looked at the facts and the science behind the maths, I found that my speculations, while great for fiction, simply melted like a morning mist against reality. I think it highly unlikely we'll see anything approaching viable commercial spaceflight in the lifetime of anyone here; even if we establish a lunar colony. We'll have to establish an actual spaceport outside the gravity well, for one thing, and that's a tremendous undertaking that would likely financially cripple all the major powers combined. It's a goal worth pursuing -- I'm pretty firmly convinced it's the only way our little species is likely to survive in the long run -- but it's going to be a long, hard slog to get there IF it can be done at all.

Meantime, keep on dreaming and looking for ways to make it work. That's the only way to overcome these things: realize you've got an impossible task and then go about finding a way to make it possible; just realize you've got an awful long road to travel to get there.

[Alexa]

Let's not forget one thing: the children grow up with computers nowadays. They have all kind of gadgets, good books, fantasy&SF movies, etc to work thier imagination. Do you really believe this generation will be so pessimistic at 30's ?

I realize it's a huge goal to be reached, but impossible ? And no matter the danger, you'll always find amateurs to go out there. If it's your time to die, you can do it in your own home. Some crazy killer can find you there, where you think you're safe. I read recently about a guy who's goal was to swim with sharks. He paid thousands of dollars for it. What will do this type of guy the day when the interstallar flight becomes reality ?

And Chris, you know, when your hobby becomes your work, age stops to bug you so much. The owner of the company I work for, has over 70's and he comes at work every day. At his age, he still has a hell of a good memory and passion to start other projects.

[j. d. worthington]

This isn't pessimism -- don't confuse pessimism and realism. To be realistic about the problems is necessary if you're going to overcome the difficulties in something as complex and dangerous as space travel. Dreaming is a great impetus, but when putting lives at risk -- and commercial space travel will most certainly do that -- the best way to shut such travel down is to be overly optimistic and not do all necessary to safeguard your paying customers. Any such companies would be shut down within a heartbeat if the casualty count starts to mount too high.

Also, it isn't the computers, and all the gadgets, etc. Nor the sf books and such -- after all, the very idea of hyperspatial travel gained its popularity in the 1920s sf, where you had huge galaxy-hopping ships that could literally go from one of the galaxy to the other less than the blink of an eye. These are the things that inspired many scientists and engineers in their time, as well. Yes, the computers, etc., help speed up research and calculations, but what we're dealing with here is, quite possibly, the very basic physical structure of the universe as an impassable barrier. This may not be the case, but until we actually come up against evidence that our model of the physical universe is almost completely erroneous, one simply cannot ignore this as a fact.

Chris has been discussing, on another thread, the Bussard Ramjet, which may be the most workable solution to the problem; but, as he has noted there, the difficulties even here are far beyond our capabilities at this point, and probably for a very long time in the future. Do you have any idea of the amount of, or kind of, fuel needed for traveling between the stars? And if we are going even at light speed, the nearest star system with any indication of planetary bodies is far enough away that it would likely be the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those who boarded the ship that would actually be the ones arriving. This would simply be too long-term an investment to get any commercial interests off the ground. We'd need something that overcomes that difficulty before space trading becomes even remotely feasible. The entire idea of hyperspace may not be scientifically implausible, but hyperspace travel is quite another thing.

These aren't pessimistic observations; this is being realistic. It's noticing that whopping big boulder blocking the road between the walls of the pass rather than walking blindly into it and ending up with concussion and freezing to death while unconscious once night sets in. Now, one may find a way over, around, under or through that boulder, but first one has to acknowledge its existence. The speed-of-light barrier is the boulder; expenses, human irrascibility, safety features, short-sightedness on the necessity for exploration, etc. are the big boulder's little brothers and sisters (some not much littler than the boulder and some, perhaps, even bigger -- human faults may be the biggest yet, as they're perhaps harder to overcome in the end than the physical difficulties).

Don't get me wrong: I love great space-spanning stories; I grew up on this stuff, and really expected to see us at least get a colony going on the moon and Mars by this time, and perhaps even reach the nearer stars before I shuffled off. But if you're going to have an honest understanding of what's required here, it requires a good, hard look at the physics (and the psychology, on the human end) of the thing, not wishful thinking. As for individuals: yes, they might very well take such a chance. I certainly would, if it were offered to me and I could afford it, and to hell if I died once I got beyond the atmosphere, as long as I could at least experience what it was like to be out there. But a few individuals would not allow the payment of the expenses, and governments would step in and shut down anything that was simply slaughtering people left and right for commercial viability. Otherwise the mass of humanity would be putting the politicians' heads on pikes. Do you think your family would sit still if they knew the company had knowingly put you at risk and you'd died on such a venture? Perhaps they would; but if so, they'd definitely be the exception. Most would move heaven and earth to make sure those people spent the rest of their lives in prison, or even suffered the death penalty themselves; and if it were a common occurrence with their ventures, no power on earth would keep them from being torn to pieces by an angry mob. There will, inevitably, be deaths. When pioneering westward, there were many who didn't make it. But, I repeat, this was an earthly environment where there was some chance; in space, that chance is gone: if something goes wrong, those people are dead. Period. At very least until it truly does become a large-scale migration where ships between planets are as common as moving vans on our public highways; and if that takes place, it's gonna be a long, long time. I hope it happens! I (sadly) won't live to see it; I doubt my great-granchildren will. But they might.

But before any of this can happen, we've got to make it viable on paper, and we're nowhere near that. We've got to overcome what to all indications is an impassable physical barrier (light-speed), and we've got to find a viable way of fueling such a vessel, and one that's cheap enough to allow massive fleets of such vessels, not just a few, and find things that would make such trade commercially sensible, and overcome prejudices about spending money on such things rather than on solving problems down here, and politician's timidity .... It's a tall order. I don't say it can't be done; I simply say that, as of yet, we have absolutely no indication that it's even physically possible, let alone dealing with the other issues. So let's get to work on them realistically and solve them (if possible). Then we have some hope of making it actually work. Until then, it remains a wonderful but unattainable dream. You can't argue with the universe. It doesn't argue back. It just kills you.

[pham]

Why not the United States, Chris (just wondering)?

[chrispenycate]

Oh, they could do it. They've got the infrastructure (even if beaurocracy's clogging it's arteries so that only about 2% of the work is in the forward direction), the money (even if most of it's owed to somebody else; and even if they can't see that money which is spent inside the country isn't thrown away; it is in fact reducing poverty better than unenployment benefits or charity programs) and the people.
The trouble is that they're just coasting on past achievements, no stimulus, no political will; no competition. Which is a pity, because, while I don't always like the United States (that's as a political entity, not individuals) I like the ones who are likely to inherit less.
Still, if the solution for cimbing out of the gravity well turns out to be exotic, or within the budget of a corporation rather than exclusive to a government (like laser launchers if energy ever became available cheap enough anywhere, or the orbital tower, though, as I mentioned in a previous post, that almost has to be built from the roof down, which involves considerable space capacity before it's built, and the base has to be dead on the equator) so the total dependence on government funding can be broken)
But I get the feeling that American (meaning North American, meaning the U. S. of A.) expansionism is drawing to a close, and that future space programs will concentrate on military aspects of being able to wipe out everyone who doesn't like them (meaning everyone else on the planet except Tony), leaving the conquest of space to the next generation.
This will almost certainly involve more deaths; more discomfort, fewer of the "individuals bucking against the rigid system" that SF so loves; but I've still got faith in mankind never accepting that the impossible can't be done.

[j. d. worthington]

Chris, I'm not too certain about the U.S. being permanently in that position -- but I think that, for the foreseeable future, you're unfortunately quite correct. It's possible that we'll see a change in that dynamic, of course; this country tends to swing back and forth on that pendulum a lot and has done throughout its history (though more toward the extreme "conservative", isolationist -- in the sense of "America first and everybody else after if at all" -- than healthy expansionist, given such a thing exists). Don't count us quite out yet, but it's gonna take a serious, kick-in-the-pants reason to get us up off our posteriors, I'm afraid.