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"Looking back through history, I see no evidence for humanity making the best of things, and I think it's a pretty safe bet that's an on-going trend."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Slowboat | ||
| Slower than lightspeed spacecraft used for interstellar colonization. |
One of the hallmarks of Niven's novels is the use of realistic technology for space travel.
| Settling Home had been made easier by two techniques. The slowboats had carried sixty colonists each, in stasis. Sixty colonists would have filled three or four slow boats a century earlier. And, though no living thing could survive travel in a ramrobot, it had proved possible to ship fuel to the slowboats by ramrobots. An older technique was used extensively: colony supplies were shipped by ramrobot to orbit around Home, saving room aboard the slowboats. |
| Technovelgy from Protector,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1973 Additional resources -
|
There is no way for a spacecraft to travel faster than light using currently available technology. However, interstellar colonization is possible using ships that travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.
Consumables are the biggest problem, given the length of time; also, journeys that take longer than a human lifetime are not easily undertaken.
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'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
