Known Space; why so small??

[AcesHigh]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

Sorry, AcesHigh - it's Time AND resources AND desire.

truth, but resources apparently are not that scarce, since Louis Wu himself can take a space yatch and explore some places.

the question is why such exploration hasnt been done by governments and other human entities? Or probes? Is Known Space a kinda of "dark ages" of the future where humanity has lost desire to explore?

You can have all the time in the world(sic), but if the resources you need to travel from place to place are limited, you're not going to be able to visit that many places. And you can have lots of resources, but if very few people want to use (or can afford to use) them going to other worlds, it isn't going to happen.

maybe not the colonizing, but the exploration wouldnt be so hard. As I said, intelligent robotic probes could be exploring and expanding Known Space at a very fast rate.

As to the short travel times you mention, that's fine if all you want to do is get as far from Earth as possible; but does exploration really happen that way?

I guess so. Thats what NASA does. Explore the solar system with probes that take 15 years to reach pluto. How much ground could you cover with hyperspace probes of the Known Space age?

[AcesHigh]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

And don't forget, Wunderland, We Made It and Jinx were all settled by slowboat, taking centuries to reach their destinations. The hyperdrive has only been in humanity's hands for a few centuries, and ships to take them were all military at the outset, and incredibly expensive for a while afterward.

Since I didnt know the whole story of Known Space, thats something I was hoping someone would explain.

No, I think the point Niven's making is that the people who go extragalactic have no real concept of the sheer scale of interstellar space.

its immense I know. As I said in the post that never appeared, in a 50ly ray around Earth there are over 1400 star systems and 2000 stars, albeit they are mostly dim red dwarfs.

[chrispenycate]

Mankind's been expanding at sub-light speeds for many generations, sending out Bussard ramjet propelled probes to investigate possible systems, and colonising ships to any suuitable planets (and at least one asteroid belt which, since a largish proportion of astronauts are belters rather than flatlanders should suit them quite well)

During this expansion they ran into the Kzinzi, an agressive, lion like culture that had got into space by enslaving the more advanced race that discovered them ( they'd never have been able to co-operate enough on the research to make it on their own.)

During this war the outsiders (that's the cold, photoelectric ones) sold the secret of the hyperdrive to humanity, not to the kzinzi, Victory for humans, pick up the pieces, take over a number of races enslaved by the kzinzi. A generation – a long generation, with boosterspice – of consolidation, and they're starting to explore again. They know ( the leaders know) that the core of the galaxy is exploding, and in a hundred thousand years or so they're going to have to move on, but they can afford to procrastinate a little, and the ARM ( the police force) has as a principal duty to eleminate all inventions with the potential for massive damage(which means almost everything; who can judge all the potential of an idea?) so technical development is slow.

But an awful lot of the "known space" stories (including of course "Ringworld") are wholy or partially set outside known space.