Aphelion

No time dilation at light speed? Would that be the Tau Zero condition (title of an old Poul Anderson hard sf novel)?

Actually, if the traveler perceives no passage of time at all, then from his/her viewpoint, the entire time spent at 'c' would be no time at all -- but for folks back on Earth, the full 41 (or whatever) years would have gone by. I think that's what Mr. H. meant. The crew of the ship were now 30 or 41 or whatever years behind on news (and orders) from home.

As for the people behaving like us 20th- and early-21st-Century trogs (for what is the difference between huddling in a cave and huddling in a TV/computer room?) -- the same criticism / praise was leveled at Star Trek: TOS, where Roddenberry envisioned the series as showing contemporary humans in a futuristic setting for the purposes of addressing issues that would be censored if raised in a 'real-world' context. Mebbe Mr. H. was doing likewise, and the apparent 20th/21st Century characteristics were meant to show this intention.

On the other hand, he may just assume that humans WON'T change much, even in a thousand years. They'll still be self-serving, ambitious, and capable of rationalizing the most monstrous acts...

RM

... Well, first, hardly anybody would drive from Toronto to Saskatchewan, especially not at these gas prices...

Would you be happy if we changed the 41 to 30 and replaced the term "time dilation" with something else? After all, you didn't deny my assertion that travel at anything below but a significant percentage of c would result in some degree of time DIFFERENCE between the ship's crew and home base. Suppose they have some sort of sf frippery that allows them to bend space SLIGHTLY, but only if they first achieve your postulated 80% c or thereabouts. Then they WOULD experience some degree of time dilation, but still be able to travel 40-something light years in 30-something home base years...

(Think Star Trek rather than Arthur C. Clarke or Poul Anderson in non-fantasy mode. (Heinlein never used FTL that I recall (aside from weirdness like The Number of the Beast, written when he may have been a tad hypoxic), so never mind RAH.) We never heard of the Enterprise or Zephrem Cochrane's first warp ship causing the solar system to collapse while accelerating from 'rest' to c, although it sure looked like Cochrane did accelerate gradually to some high velocity before generating a 'warp field'.)

Let's face it, this was not intended to be 'hard' sf any more than the sociological / anthropological stuff by Chad Oliver was, or most of Silverberg (or any of Ellison). Label it a fantasy or fable if it makes you happy, albeit one that uses (or abuses) some scientific-sounding terms. They used the Argle-bargle Device to trim 30% off their still-relativistic trip time...

RM

Spaceship Could Fly Faster Than Light
By Jeremy Hsu
Staff Writer
posted: 13 August 2008
07:12 am ET
www.space.com TECH

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... speed.html

Apparently the Star Trek TNG/Voyager technobabble about bubble-like "warp fields" wasn't ENTIRELY gobbledygook... although in this case, the bubble(s) would be astern (or astern and in front) of the ship.

RM