Science fiction fantasies
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Science fiction fantasies
I
truly am grateful for the scientific and engineering advances that have occurred during my lifetime. Our lives have been improved in ways that our ancestors could only dream about, and materials research has been at the forefront of that progress. However, I’ve also been a fan of science fiction from my earliest years, and I can’t help but wish we had some of the devices and materials that so far exist only on-screen or in books. It’s not like I want a flying car like we see in The Jetsons1 or The Fifth Element.2 It’s crazy enough driving through traffic in Los Angeles without worrying about someone coming at me from above or below. However, I do want those suborbital transports (Land of the Giants,3 The Unincorporated Man4) that would take me from LA to London or LA to New Delhi in 45 minutes rather than the 14–18 hours that the fastest air transport currently takes. All we would need is better materials for the fuselage and for the engines. And a power source. Maybe we’d actually need Star Trek’s dilithium crystals to provide the power.5 Is that too much to ask? I also want my own space ship. I would love to be able to explore the solar system and the galaxy. I’m certainly not interested in being in a vessel shot out of a giant cannon as in From the Earth to the Moon,6 Jules Verne’s 1865 novel. Even if we had super tough materials that
could survive such a launch, the human body could never take it. At my age, I’m not even interested in experiencing the normal, powered rocket launch that is common today. The human race has launched hundreds of manned and unmanned spacecraft in this fashion, and the materials science associated with reliable launch is well known. Nonetheless, the inertial stress on the human body is significant. No, I want a spacecraft that can take me to orbit in a gentle fashion, either through a novel propulsion system that allows powered flight to orbit at low acceleration, inertial dampeners that eliminate the effects of acceleration on mass,5 or an antigravity system that would float me gently into space. My spacecraft also has to help me survive the space environment. I cannot be exposed to intolerable levels of radiation. I cannot be exposed directly to vacuum or to the extremes of temperature that one finds in space. The interior environment of the spacecraft must be sufficiently earthlike that I can explore the universe in comfort. Oh, and I’d really like to have a holodeck for recreation (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine).5,7 Instantaneous transport across large distances would be even better, but use of matter transporters raises different issues. I am not interested in traveling through either the Star Trek transporter, or use of the star gates (e.g., from Star-
gate SG-1,8 Stargate Atlantis,9 and Stargate Universe10), which invoke transport from gate to gate through wormholes.11 In both cases, the idea of having my matter ripped apart at one location and reconstructed at another location is just too much for me. Maybe I’m just a
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