Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
The simplest calculation yields 4.5 days, but that's a straight line
through the
Sun (the longest time is when Mars and Earth are on opposites sides
of the Sun I
presume). Since going through the Sun could be a bit problematic, my guess is
that a somewhat more circuitous route would take a bit longer.
Ah. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks in that case.
That would reduce the solar system to roughly the same dimensions as
the earth circa 1880, when passenger steamships replaced sailing
ships. I mean there was a world-wide, integrated society and economy
based on travel times of about 3 weeks. I believe voyages from China
to the California took roughly three weeks. Circa 1883, it took 25
days to go from New York to San Francisco by steamship, including one
day crossing the Isthmus of Panama. See "A Chronological History of
the Origin and Development of Steam Navigation" (Google books --
gotta love 'em!).
Arthur Clarke wrote that the solar system may eventually be reduced
to roughly these (psychic) dimensions. It would also have a 19th
century feel to it because real-time telephone conversations will
never be possible but of course e-mail is similar to telegraphs
(cables). He felt that deep person-to-person understanding &
friendship requires at least conversation by telephone:
"At the worst, [the speed of light communications delay] will amount
to eleven hours -- the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit
of Pluto, the outermost planet. Between the three inner worlds Earth,
Mars, and Venus, it will never be more than twenty minutes -- not
enough to interfere seriously with commerce or administration, but
more than sufficient to shatter those personal links of sound or
vision that can give us a sense of direct contact with friends on
Earth, wherever they may be."
Frankly, I disagree. He wrote that back in the 1960s. In the Internet
Era, text has once more became the principal means of communication
between educated adults, as it was back in 1880. I do not think that
friendship among widely separated intellectuals and scientists in the
18th and 19th century was shallow because it depended mainly on text.
Assuming SR holds, there will never be anything like a 19th century
scale world-wide society spanning interstellar distances. I have no
doubt that if people survive without exterminating ourselves we will
eventually reach other stars, but the only thing we will exchange
between stars will be ideas and history:
"Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable
limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its
ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more
widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants
crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world,
but have they conquered it -- for what do their countless colonies
know of it, or of each other?
So it will be with us as we spread outward from Mother Earth,
loosening the bonds of kinship and understanding, hearing faint and
belated rumors at second -- or third
-- or thousandth-hand of an ever-dwindling fraction of the entire
human race. Though Earth will try to keep in touch with her children,
in the end all the efforts of her archivists and historians will be
defeated by time and distance, and the sheer bulk of material. For
the number of distinct societies or nations, when our race is twice
its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the
men who have ever lived up to the present time."
- Profiles of the Future, chapter 10
My, didn't that man have a way with words!
- Jed
