{"id":955,"date":"2007-06-17T15:12:45","date_gmt":"2007-06-17T20:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granades.com\/2007\/06\/17\/interstellar-colonization-is-really-difficult\/"},"modified":"2007-06-17T16:10:07","modified_gmt":"2007-06-17T21:10:07","slug":"interstellar-colonization-is-really-difficult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/granades.com\/?p=955","title":{"rendered":"Interstellar Colonization is Really Difficult"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SF author Charles Stross crunches the numbers and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/blog-static\/2007\/06\/the_high_frontier_redux.html\">explains how difficult space colonization is<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe long and the short of what I&#8217;m trying to get across is quite simply that, in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic \u00e2\u20ac\u201d magic tech that, furthermore, does things that from today&#8217;s perspective appear to play fast and loose with the laws of physics \u00e2\u20ac\u201d interstellar travel for human beings is near-as-dammit a non-starter. And while I won&#8217;t rule out the possibility of such seemingly-magical technology appearing at some time in the future, the conclusion I draw <i>as a science fiction writer<\/i> is that if interstellar colonization ever happens, it will <i>not<\/i> follow the pattern of historical colonization drives that are followed by mass emigration and trade between the colonies and the old home soil.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He also looks at colonization in the solar system and comes up with a similarly gloomy outlook. Based on my back-of-the-envelope fact checking, his reasoning and conclusions look solid. The comments are long and involved, but bear Charlie out as well.<\/p>\n<p>The most entertaining bit of the comment thread are the people saying that he&#8217;s wrong, not because his math is wrong or his reasoning is flawed, but because science fiction authors shouldn&#8217;t be so pessimistic and should believe whole-heartedly in the colonization of space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SF author Charles Stross crunches the numbers and explains how difficult space colonization is. The long and the short of what I&#8217;m trying to get across is quite simply that, in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic \u00e2\u20ac\u201d magic tech that, furthermore, does things that from today&#8217;s perspective appear to play fast and loose &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/granades.com\/?p=955\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Interstellar Colonization is Really Difficult<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}