Science fiction/ fantasy space travel

[Hex]

One of the things that alarms me about science fiction is having to know things. So, the speed of light or the rotation of Jupiter's moons or that some bacteria are blue.

I have a story just now (coincidentally featuring blue bacteria) in which the protagonist flees earth and ends up on another, unexplored planet. I am peripherally aware that space travel is one of those things that gets people very excited -- and not in the sense of dashing gaily between the stars or admiring Jupiter's moons (*).

Am I completely scuppering any chance of escaping without a verbal beating if my protagonist gets to this other planet within a couple of years? Do I need to explain how she does it? The technology she's using on the planet is a bit rickety, so it's not as if we're talking wildly advanced. Can I get away with this being science fantasy in which I pretend I'm being sciencey but don't need to back it up with arguments from physics?

I know so little about space etc. that I'm not even sure this question makes sense.

(*) I assume Jupiter has moons.

 

[Vertigo]

It does Jupiter have moons I mean. It has four "large" moons but it has a total (so far) of around 64 satellites most of which are less than 10km in diameter.

However unless you are writing hard SF, which it definitely doesn't sound like you are, then just give them a warp/skip/jump drive or some other such name, then off they go and arrive 2 years later you could even have it a few days later. No one will get too upset by that.

 

[Hex]

Great. So they don't all have to get frozen or spend 200 years travelling through space. Thank you.

(I try to avoid any genre that describes itself as "hard")

Good to hear about the moons. I've learned something new. Now I need to worry about what a moon is. Hmm.

 

[Vertigo]

You should be able to grab as much "hard" info as you need from Wiki.

 

[HareBrain]

just give them a warp/skip/jump drive

Or a ski-jump drive! Surely you'd get enough momentum sliding a spacecraft down a ski-jump for it to shoot off out of orbit? I'd buy that.

You can see Jupiter's moons through binoculars on a good night. (Unless they were specks on the lenses.)

 

[Vertigo]

Or a ski-jump drive! Surely you'd get enough momentum sliding a spacecraft down a ski-jump for it to shoot off out of orbit? I'd buy that.

You can see Jupiter's moons through binoculars on a good night. (Unless they were specks on the lenses.)

Hehe I like that! And you certainly can see them through binoculars; I remember doing so some years back (after someone more knowledgeable than me had pointed me at the right part of the sky bizarrely I was on a mountain in Nepal at the time!)

 

[Pyan]

just give them a warp/skip/jump drive or some other such name, then off they go and arrive 2 years later you could even have it a few days later. No one will get too upset by that.

Yes, the big advantage of a warp (or skip, or hyper, or jump, or any other synonym for a FTL) drive is that just about everyone who reads SF knows exactly what you mean, and you don't have to explain how it works.

tvtropes: Faster-Than-Light Travel

 

[The Judge]

I am willing to bet, Hex, that however little science you think you know, I can beat you in the ignorance stakes. However, I do make an effort when writing my space opera, in that when I come to anything scientificky I spend a little while just reading around so I don't, for instance, have devices which work through anti-gravity (even though I call them anti-gravitation units just for the sheer hell of it!). I cheerfully have FTL travel and near-instantaneous galaxy-wide messaging systems, though -- if it's good enough for Star Trek, it's good enough for me!

What I try and do is make it sound like I know what I'm talking about even though I've no idea -- one advantage of having to listen to barristers in court for so many years...

 

[Toby Frost]

My own feeling is that if you want to read SF purely or even predominantly for the tech, you should probably just leaf through a physics textbook instead. The role of a story is to be convincing in its own terms. I don't think about principles of lift every time I take a plane flight, and there's no need that your characters ought to do so either. In fact, a lot of the scientific level of the setting can be gauged by the look of the controls and machinery, assuming your machines don't look deliberately retro. It seems reasonable to suggest, for instance, that the spaceship in Aliens is less advanced than the one in Star Trek, and probably runs off a nuclear reactor rather than squirrilium crystals or whatever they made up instead.

That said I have done a bit of research. In answer to your original question, I don't see a problem if your character just finishes the spaceflight by waking up from her pod, collecting her things from the store or whatever, with varying levels of industrialisation and/or luxury as the setting permits. For me, a lot can be forgiven if the writing is good and the characters entertaining.

 

[Parson]

Hex,

I might have a slightly different take on this as I am a reader of SF who has little pretensions about writing it. I am assuming that your book stays in our solar system. Almost all SF dealing with jump/skip/warp drive (never heard of a ski jump drive, but Jules Verne and a few others had space travel by what amounted to cannon fire), is talking about FTL (Faster than light) interstellar travel. Travel within the solar system in a relatively short time (weeks to months rather than years) only requires some sort of continual acceleration drive, able to produce a steady G or so. (In fact if you ramped up the currently available ion drive you would already be there.)

 

[Steve Jordan]

The distances between planets and solar systems are so vast that SF has consistently ignored, avoided and BS'd its way around them since forever. Whether you use something that's been used before, like a "Warp" drive or "Ion drive," make up your own name like "quantum-charged whippy-dang-doodledrive," or just avoid mentioning how and just say that you got there (no one describes the engine on a car or bus, they just say it got you there), it makes little difference in sci-fi.

 

[RJM Corbet]

The problem for sci-fi writers since 1905 when Einstein proposed the 'Theory of Relativity' is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Nothing.

Ever.

It's a problem ...

 

[Parson]

The problem for sci-fi writers since 1905 when Einstein proposed the 'Theory of Relativity' is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Nothing.

Ever.

It's a problem ...

Gravity?

 

[Vertigo]

Apparently it is only the gravitational waves that might. Nothing physical ie with mass.

 

[StirlingNewberry]

Special relativity states that it is impossible for a particle with rest mass to be accelerated to the speed of light. There are, however, loopholes even within the Standard Model. What is more important for your story is not whether the mechanism your characters use is actually physically plausible, but, instead, what it means for the world. For example, in Star Trek, the vessels move in what seems to be close to an analog of physical space, though there are ways of jumping from time to time. This means that their sense of travel and astro-politics is similar to that of earth in the 1960's. No suprise. However, in other universes, jumps are discrete, and the map of faster than light travel (or FTL) is different from the physical universe. How long travel takes is more about what it does to the plot. If it takes weeks to voyage between outposts, or the area of space is very large, this results in different cultural adaptations, much as slow travel shaped colonial empires.

So, instead of asking the question "is it ok if?" Ask the question "what kind of travel do I need to create the story I want to tell?"

 

[Hex]

Fascinating replies.

In the story I just want my character to get from Earth to somewhere else in a vaguely straight-forward way before she dies of old age.

Currently she flees earth and 18 months later -- in an unexplained sort of way -- ends up on another planet. I am contemplating adding in a paragraph about a space-whirl-jump-hoojie but my world is not about pieces of wire (shiny and exciting), it's about zombies (squelchy and alarming). I don't want to get dragged off the main topic (girl chased by zombies) to explain too much about the workings of hyperthings, but I'd like it to be vaguely plausible that she's on another planet 18 months after leaving earth.

Hmm.

 

[Vertigo]

In that case you really just need to say she took a starship to planet x and arrived 18 months later. No one is going to get in the least bit worried about that, especially if star travel and its limitations/opportunities are not central to the story.

 

[goldhawk]

Or a ski-jump drive! Surely you'd get enough momentum sliding a spacecraft down a ski-jump for it to shoot off out of orbit? I'd buy that.

Sounds like a mass driver to me.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Gravity?

Not according to Einstein, but subject of continuing debate.

However, there is the speed of mind ...

 

[TheTomG]

Not according to Einstein, but subject of continuing debate.

However, there is the speed of mind ...

Which in my case is somewhat analogous to the speed of treacle dripping off a spoon. It'd take days just to cross a room!

Anyway, yes, don't worry about the mechanism, it isn't important to your story by the sound of it, and your readers won't care as they will be more interested in what you direct their attention to, ie your character, and the zombies of course!