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Beta and Higher Patron Notice for 07/19/2019

🕑 Added 2019-07-20 00:45:50 +0000 UTC

Comments

Nyrath

Agreed! You never know just what you are flying into

Michael Hutson

One disadvantage to Fast As Light ships: you get ZERO warning of what's happening at your destination. So for example you don't hear the warning beacons that a nanoplague is dissolving everything that gets a single micron-sized self-replicator on it...

Nyrath

Ah, how could I have forgotten that? Another example is Larry Niven's "All The Bridges Rusting", where ships teleport but the teleportation signal travels at the speed of light.

Nyrath

Yes, but with a total ban on multiplayer games where a "griefer" can enrage the players. This has caused homicidal behavior in the real world, this is the last thing we want in a cramped spacecraft.

John

To go with the FTL That Ain't, there is FAL drives, Fast As Light. The best example that I know of is from Ken Macleod's Engines of Light trilogy, where a trip of 100,000 LY takes a blink of an eye for the crew and passengers, but... well, 100,000 years for everyone else. Within the "Second Sphere" people travel to different stars on a regular basis. Most trips are under 10-20 LY, so family ties are possible. (Not sure how big the Second Sphere is, it's at least a 100 LY across.)

John

Thinking about hobbies for space travelers, both the stories listed, were written before the first computer game in 1958. (It was "Tennis for Two" and was played on a oscilloscope.) These days there are plenty of games, both physical, like Carcassonne, and virtual, like... Carcassonne for IOS. And beyond normal video games, the crew can experience a virtual reality, either through an Augmented Reality system or through a VR system. (I figure that by the time folks are spending months traveling through space, motion sickness will be dealt with in one way or another.) So while there may be folks that take up the hobbies shown in the examples, a lot of folks will go "I got 10 hours free today... Back to Minecraft and I'll finish tearing down that mountain!"