Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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Star Trek: The road not travelled

by Paul Wells on Sunday, May 10, 2009 11:31pm - 32 Comments

I wonder whether the people who put the original Star Trek series together had any inkling that, nearly 43 years after the first episode aired, humanity would have travelled such a great distance in depicting wide-scale human space travel — and such a paltry distance in achieving it. JJ Abrams’ new movie uses digital imaging technology that didn’t exist last summer. The U.S. space-shuttle fleet has been substantially spiffed up in its cockpits, but the thrust technology has not seriously improved since the prototype — and remember what that was called? — flew its first test landings in 1977. Before many readers of this blog were born. When I think of that, it’s hard to enjoy a science fiction movie properly, because the underlying message is that we’ve become far better at kidding ourselves.

Tags: Star Trek

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edeast

Maybe it’s energetically more efficient, : goods consumed by many vs the few. It has got to be pretty expensive and difficult for a society to build a pyramid, or monument. For space dollars, I prefer unmanned missions. Having humans in space seems excessively vain.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

By the same token, the actual goal of the space program — to cement our faith in progress — has been transferred to digital effects. Industrial Light and Magic is the new NASA. “Some day, son, human beings will have access to customizable 3D taste-sensitive virtual explosions . . .”

http://dougsamu.wordpress.com/ dougrogers

Bread and Circuses then?

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

A footnote: if you want to see the purest (last?) expression of “Tomorrow in the stars!” I recommend “First Contact” (which I watched tonight in default of seeing the new film). The whole premise is that we will travel faster than light — and that we will eventually look back with pity on our 20th century selves, marveling that we could have doubted the feasibility of interstellar travel. Those were the days, ironically.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

As a trekkie who’s seen the new flick, allow me to say that opting to re-watch “First Contact” rather than go see the new film was a HUGE mistake.

While “First Contact” may (though I’m sceptical) give one that “Tomorrow in the stars!” type vibe, the new Star Trek has an all together more rare and exciting vibe to offer. It’s the “It’s possible for a Star Trek movie to not suck!” vibe.

(apologies to Khaaaan!)

cwe

I’m with you, Lord KO. It definitely was way better than not sucking.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Ah, meant to go see he new film (of course!) but was held back; am going tonight! Psyched!
Critical Reasoning

I saw the new flick on Saturday,and I agree with LKO and CWE. It’s definitely worth watching on the big screen. Have fun tonight, Jack.

Paul Wells

I’m bemused by edeast’s suggestion that what brought human space travel almost to an end — because come on, low-earth orbit is like doing donuts in the parking lot — was a becoming modesty. “Oooh, let’s not take this any further. The neighbours might think we were putting on airs.”

Again, my point is this: if Gene Roddenberry had known in 1965 that mankind was going to spend the next half-century putting awesome resources toward the production of successively-more-elaborate presentations of the new teevee show he was toying with, instead of trying to get to the stars, I suspect he’d have been more than a little embarrassed. Because it really has been nearly half a century. And we really are still doing donuts in the parking lot.

Brammer

We have left the parking lot in some cases

http://heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp?/

Perhaps our neighbours are already aware…

Jason Hickman

Neat link, thanks.

(And I like the fact that it specifically ID’s Pluto. Pluto’s still a planet to me, damnit!)

http://dougsamu.wordpress.com/ dougrogers

Just to poke a stick in it then; all the greatest of explorations have had government funding, while private industry gives us amusements?
http://notquiteunhinged.blogspot.com Catelli

You’re being too harsh Paul. How long did we rely on oars and sails to navigate the seas?

The technological gap between what we can do for propulsion and what is still theoretical is massive. Travel through space is not a simple undertaking.

Maybe we’ll never figure it out. But maybe we will. And as long as these movies keep getting produced, who knows what wunderkids they’ll inspire? After all, there are a lot of people in science who credit Star Trek with firing their imaginations.

So sit back, enjoy, and dream.
Critical Reasoning

Not quite “donuts in the parking lot”! Attaining low earth orbit cheaply is the key to future space exploration. This may eventually be achieved by a single stage to orbit approach (SSTO). A British company is developing an interesting orbital spaceplane design. Check out the Skylon:

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/The%20SKYLON%20Spaceplane-Progress%20to%20Realisation,%20JBIS,%202008.pdf
edeast

That’s not exactly what I meant. I was implying that paying for a few select people to get a view of the blueberry in space and then telling inspiring stories, or planting a flag on the moon, was similar to civilizations building a monument in the past. But I don’t know the scientific output of astronauts vs robots, but opinions are cheap, and this is after all the internet, so my uninformed opinion is that it seems expensive to send up a habitat for a human; and therefore anthrocentric, vain, impractical, pointless. I know the sun is going to run out eventually and we will need to get out of here, but we’ve got a few years, for now we should get some better propulsion, work on zapping incoming asteroids, control global warming, What I would like to do would be to get an unmanned probe hitched to one of the

Andrew

It’s definitely worth the effort. The most optimistic part of Gene Rodenberry’s vision was that once humanity developped the technology to satisfy most of its needs it would turn to exploration and the search for knowledge as a substitute for the evolutionary/consumption impulse. It’s a wonderful idea, but hasn’t happened, and the main priorities for govt. spending are more about self indulgence than science and exploration.

I would definitely like to see a manned mission to Mars and a Moon base like the one Bush briefly talked about establishing in 2005, and unmanned probes sent onto the gas giant moons. But those are areas that have already been observed and are reasonably well known to us. At a certain level, though, we remain stuck in the solar system and unable to get beyond it. Sending a probe to another solar system would have an astronomical cost, and we wouldn’t hear back from it for several centuries.
Which is why one would imagine the bulk of the scientific efforts in the field have been in the areas of theory and observation, where there have been huge advances in the last three decades, of which the work done by the Hubble Telescope is probably the best example.

The “New Frontier” in space exploration, if there is to be one, will involve finding some new system of propulsion that will make interstellar travel possible. Whether any of that will move beyond the science fiction level at any time in the near future is debatable. Cold Fusion propulsion, or something that involves harnessing dark matter, or something that involves creating a space time bubble around the object travelling through space to escape relativity, are all strong possibilities. Whether any of them will bear fruit by 2179, when Zefram Cochrane supposedly invents warp drive in the Star Trek Universe is another question (see the article below).

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/fof_physics_031126-1.html
Northern PoV

As a long time Science Fiction fan I am a little bemused at Mr. Wells impatience.
Even hokey SciFi (as purists might refer to the more popular side of the genre) like Stark Trek recognizes that to get to the stars, we must invent Faster Than Light (FTL) travel. (Warp 9 Scotty!)

The alternatives to FTL are few. Most involve some form of “generational space-ships”, a idea that is at least conceivable using current scientific knowledge as a starting point as are long journeys inside our own solar system. Only a humanity faced with extinction would build generational star-ships. Robot ships full of hibernating humans is a kind of variation on this idea.

Unless some kid-genius pulls a (Shawn-Fanning-type) rabbit out of a hat to re-invent physics, FTL is either a long way down the road (like hundreds or thousands of years?) or impossible. 43 years is but a blip when faced with the task of creating the means to cross inter-planetary and inter-stellar distances. (Let alone finding an energy & cost efficient way to achieve low-earth orbit to do some more donuts.)

In the meantime the space-race is sidelined while the confluence of Information Technology (like the “digital imaging technology that didn’t exist last summer “) and Nanotechnology leads us all to the singularity: http://www.kurzweilai.net/
whyshouldIsellwhoutwheat

The problem is the exploration of space is that sentimentality has overwhelmed rationality.

The quickest way to space is to let machines and robots do it first. You get much more science and knowledge for the buck. But people insist on putting people up there, before it is really cost-effective to do so, so space exploration has ground to a halt.

The space movies are what they are because the money has been put into the machines and robots. The space movies will grind to a halt once they have to start paying big salaries to the movie stars.

If you want space exploration, pay the geeks to do scientific research, and don’t waste it on celebrities, sports gladiators, investment bankers, lawyers, and yes, astronauts (at least initially).
peimac13

Humanity doesn’t have the collective will at the moment to expand manned missions beyond orbit. If it were absolutely necessary, we could still send men to the moon. Too bad we’d largely be using upgraded versions of the Saturn V to do it. Still, if mineral deposits should be found on an accessible body near by… let the race begin again.
JTester

This is a good thread, keep it up!
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

I think the people at NASA have completely lost the plot. Space shuttles are not really practical for much except for doing tests on what happens to plant growth when subject to reduced gravity or somesuch. NASA should be focusing on things that will excite us, getting more bang for the buck so to speak.
Andrew

Experiments conducted in zero gravity have probably been the single most useful and lucrative thing to come out of the space program in the last thirty years. People rarely get uniformly “excited” about anything, and only rarely can they be mobilized around an expensive cause like space exploration. The 1960′s were a much more hopeful, optimistic time, and the impetus for space exploration came in large part from competition with the Soviets. If people get excited about space travel now, it will be because we have developped a cheaper, faster method of propulsion or discover that we can somehow make use of the mineral ressources of other planets when ours grow scarce.
Andrew

Mind you, NASA might be able to get a substantial boost if it can take advantage of the fact that Barack Obama is

a) a big Star Trek fan.
and
b) willing to sign hundred billion dollar cheques at the drop of a hat.

Brammer

and
(c) likes to talk about things that can inspire a nation.

Now THAT would be stimulus!

Kyle Bailey

Pauls Wells: “low-earth orbit is like doing donuts in the parking lot ”
Low Earth Orbit is more accurately described by Heinlein’s “half-way to anywhere in the solar system.”
(It is quite literally, hlaf-way when looking at energy consumption, and energy is always the most important boundary)

I think one of the big differences between our present world and the late twentieth/early twenty first world envisioned in the great sci-fi literature of teh mid twentieth (Arthur C. Clarke for e.g.) is that living systems are very, very, difficult to duplicate.
One thing which many space enthusiasts and environemtalists ignore is the degree to which space exploration really drove the point home that ‘life is bloody difficult.’ Those familiar with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot idea, or Lovelock’s comparision of the earth system (Gaia) to Mars/Venus will hopefully be following my train of thought.
Robotic exploration is certainly not the silver bullett either. Although the biomass of a living Homo Sapiens certinaly requires a lot of support- its not as if sending artifical living systems to harsh places is easy!
http://liliannattel.wordpress.com Lilian Nattel

Bread and circuses–yes. But so were the original space flights, galvanizing public imagination during the cold war.
Bill Simpson

It was good old fashioned “war” that propelled us to the moon and, failing any other economic incentive, it is hard to see where the driver will come to take us to Mars or beyond. I was an avid Sc-fi reader in my younger years, and I look back with amazement at what the writers supposed we would have in 2009.

Now if Iran or North Korea decides to send a probe to Mars, we may see a different response…
Brammer

We can’t let this thread go by without referencing a real success story. We just may be closer to commerical space than we think (and without government funding).

http://www.scaled.com/index.html

http://dougsamu.wordpress.com/ dougrogers

Hey, man. I hold nothing at all against them. Those machines are pure beauty. I believe when Richard Branson flies all those influential people – who can afford it – sub-orbitally, they’ll get it – about the Earth, and the pure simple beauty of basic research.

But the motive is still amusement as opposed to exploration, isn’t it?

http://notquiteunhinged.blogspot.com Catelli

Duh! (Smacks head in frustration)

Zefram Cochrane isn’t born until 2030 and he doesn’t invent the Warp Drive until 2060ish.

We’ve still got time!

Of course there’s that messy business of World War 3 that has to happen first…