Aphelion

"This story would have been"

"easier to read if it"

"didn't have all these short"

"sentences with their own full quotes -- "

"I couldn't figure out who was talking"

"most of the time."

Along with that, the Saras don't seem to be taking the situation as seriously as they should, and the 'time-skips' happening between flights don't make much sense, either.

I don't like it when people talk about Faster Than Light travel and then have their characters saying things like, "Toast me a bagel" and "I'll make coffee." Either set the story so far in the future that food is appearing out of thin air when asked for, or don't put FTL travel within the next 40 years. It won't happen. Sorry.

I completely disagree, bd. Human culture changes at a pace that is positively glacial compared to the rate of technological change. Go back and read what the classic sci-fi writers thought of the future; Heinlein couldn't envision electronics without vacuum tubes, and his characters were doing math on slide rules -- and he was writing some of that stuff during my lifetime. (Of course, as much as I love his work, he was kind of a clunk.) Today, we use -- USE -- quantum tunneling in electron microscopes! And we still eat, dress, and speak in ways that haven't changed appreciably in centuries. Who's to say what isn't possible (at least in more than four dimensions)? And, after all, this is a lot of the fun of writing "speculative fiction."

"Tea, hot, with lemon." Jean Luke Piccard

Get it right, bottomdweller -- it's "Tea, Earl Gray, hot." I almost think that if Jean Luke were a forum member here, that would be his sig line.

By the way, I'm no physicist, but I think we're far more likely to attain FTL than anything like a Star Trek transporter (or food replicator).

And what about NON-Local phenomena? It's proven. Einstein's spooky action at a distance.

Quantum entanglement . . . I'm not convinced.

I recently finished a video course called "Impossible: Physics Beyond the Edge" (http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedescl ... x?cid=1299) -- excellent course, btw -- and it talked about that, but it seems that these pairs of particles just come out behaving in a particular manner as they are created. Some take it that they effect each other over distance, but not everyone agrees, and I didn't think the lecturer gave a compelling argument that they did. There's a definite argument against quantum entanglement: if two particles effected each other instantaneously over any distance, then they could be used to transmit information at FTL speeds, and that breaks the rules, because it violates causality.

I'm definitely going to have to look at those again soon.

"Computer: beer, Buweiser, cold."

"Cannot comply. Product 'Buweiser' not recognized. Please repeat request when you are sober."

Bud-dweller, if you want to order any course from Teachco, I recommend you wait until it's on sale. Read the details on their site; they have BIG discounts that apply to all their courses on a rotating basis.

gino, I just copied your entire top line into search -- I'm sure the results could take days and days to look at, but right from the top, I found:

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/20 ... e_ever.php

and here's the original article:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/ ... test=faces

Here's another good link to a thread with some interesting comments:

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111209


This just reinforces my suspicion of anything that Fox labels as "news," let alone "science."

Nah, a food replicator is a snap. It's just a recipe robot. "Anyone with ten grand can build one". The only slightly tricky part is the waste reclaimation system on the back end to reproduce the raw materials, but that's more of a dollar efficiency problem. The military could do it if they really wanted.

They'd do it if anyone would. After all, most soldiers would say the food tastes like crap already anyway.