Death of space flight and navigating the Internet
I find William Gibson to be fascinating (in a remote and cursory way). I’m a big fan of his earlier works and purchased Neuromancer in hardback many, many years after it was written simply to have it in my library. Certainly the world has not gone Cyberpunk, but there are many elements of Gibson’s writing style that have come about. I’ll spare you the off-topic banter and move on.
I subscribe to the Amazon Blog which listed an article today, the third in a series of three, detailing an interview with William Gibson wherein, Gibson referred to Charlie Stross’ assertion that there will never, ever be any manned space flight.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to read Charlie Stross’s argument as to why he believes that there will never, ever be any manned space travel. It’s not going to happen. We’re not going to colonize Mars. All of that is just a big fantasy. And it’s so convincing. I read that and I’m like, “My god, there goes so much of the fiction I read as a child.”
William Gibson, in the above referenced interview.
Googling for Charles Stross led me to this blog about the Stross speech concerning the future of Space Flight. It’s a fascinating read, if you want to take the time. The summary is that apparently Gibson got it half wrong. Stross is not anti-Space Flight, he’s just very practical in his approach to what it takes for space flight to happen. It would be better said to say “Stross believes that there will never, ever be any manned space travel, until certain fundamental sciences catch up with the human imagination (i.e., magic wand.)“ Stross in his response to the above referenced blog (he makes an appearance) comments on how shallow (my words, not his) pro-space-settlers are:
And in the course of wading through 650-odd comments on my own blog, I’ve become rather less tolerant of space settler enthusiasts who assume that if we can just fire a few thousand tons of construction materials into orbit, the messy biological details will be taken care of by the janitor or somebody. Environmental science is the key to space colonization (if we don’t end up doing the upload/AI/posthuman thing), not just an afterthought or minor detail to worry about once we’ve sorted out the space elevator and lunar mines.
Charles Stross, in response to the blog article referenced above.
Of course, following a link from one of Stross’ responses, I ended up at his personal blog (I think), wherein, in much the same flavor of Michio Kaku’s book Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century. (Although the Amazon review is somewhat derogatory, the idea I’m aiming at is the attempt to theorize real-world advances in science and the socialogical changes that result therefrom.) I’ve not had a chance to read all of the article, but it was such a fascinating jaunt in to the internet, that I felt it was worth sharing.
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