Movies and plausibility...

I find it possible to imagine a hive-based society, with one controlling intellect, which could accomplish it.

I find it possible to imagine self-replicating machines. (What are we, after all?) One hacker with this technology could go interstellar.

There are nearly infinite possibilities.


It seems to me that you have not given sufficient thought to all of the possibilities.

I've given this a great deal of thought over the years, because of discussions about and arguments about the alleged Fermi paradox. And it is my experience that most other people haven't really given it that much thought.

As for "hive" societies, it amuses me to think that one would posit a hive society, and then imagine that such a society would produce the sort of independent thinkers who are necessary to the advance of knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge--or that the society would tolerate, let alone encourage, such individuals if they did come along. In a hive, as long as the traditional processes which achieve the hive's goal (or rather, the goal of the queen of the hive), there is no reason for change, and good reason (from the queen's point of view) to suppress innovation. I see no good reason to assume that a hive type of society would be likely to become sufficiently technologically significant to achieve interstellar flight. I see many good reasons to assume that such a society would not.

Self-replicating machines make the most sense for interstellar exploration. In fact, von Neumann machines are the most plausible means by which a highly-advanced technological civilization could explore the cosmos. But this is a discussion of the plausibility of science fiction motion pictures, and Gunga was talking about the implausibility of encountering alien species (and i would add to that the highly implausible scenario of alien species arriving here), and not about the likelihood of von Neumann machines being succesfully deployed.

Interstellar travel is not an arena for limitless possibilities. In fact, there are two huge limiting factors which predictably get ignored by both the makers of science fiction motion pictures, and by science fiction writers. These are microgravity and cosmic radiation. To send out a colonizing expedition, for example, would not only require enormous resources to provide the "space ship," and would require enormous resources to keep the colonists alive until they arrive at their destination (even if you posit a reliable method of suspended animation, which would still require taking lots of energy resources along for the ride), it would also require enormous resources to provide some sort of artificial gravity. Using centrifugal forces would increase the size of the "space ship" by orders of magnitude--no sleek 1950s style rocket ship for such a venture as that.

But cosmic radiation is the real deal breaker. To shield an organism from cosmic radiation, you need either to be able to generate a reliable, large and continuous electro-magnetic field (such as that which protects Earth, and which Mars lacks), or you'd need huge quantities of heavy, non-radioactive metals, which once again increases the resource expense of your space ship by orders of magnitude. Microgravity and cosmic radiation are not factors that can be wished away in the real world in the "gee, wouldn't it be cool if" manner of science fiction.

I've given a great deal of thought to these matters. I'll add you to the list of those who haven't.

I'll add you to the list of folks who see a bump in the road, and then turn their car around to go the other direction.

I'm fairly lenient when it comes to science fiction or fantasy movies, as long as they remain consistent within their own constructed realities. For instance, I don't have a problem with faster-than-light speed in sci fi movies -- I always figure that they've discovered some loophole in the laws of physics. But the movie has to be consistent within the parameters that it has constructed.

For example, in the past vampire movies never really dealt with the inconsistencies presented by a being that, in order to survive, sucks the blood of other people and turns them into vampires. Simple arithmetic would demonstrate that, after a few years, everybody on earth would end up being a vampire. Some modern treatments have actually explored this conundrum and have come up with a variety of explanations for the fact that vampires don't keep multiplying (unlike zombies, which really would multiply until they could take over the earth). Most of those explanations, unfortunately, revolve around the fact that vampires are now a bunch of mopey emo teens.

The one sci fi convention for which I have very little patience is time travel. The only movie that really explored the vast insoluble paradoxes of time travel was, oddly enough, Back to the Future II.

Microgravity and cosmic radiation aren't bumps in the road, they are pot holes to vie with the Grand Canyon. I suspect you're just in one of your typical snits because you want to deny the things i write, but can't come up with a plausible objection.

I haven't denied the possibility of the sorts of silly fantasies in which the makers of science fiction movies are wont to indulge, i'm just denying their probability. And the topic of this thread movies and plausibility, not day dreams and possibilities.

EDIT: Although this statement is about as likely to be made by me as that there will be a blizzard in Death Valley in July, on this one, Gunga Dim has got it right.

Good lord, Set. Your "grand canyon" barriers are barely the "bumps in the road" that I mentioned.

Microgravity is a minor problem; there are already proposed solutions that are being examined for missions to Mars.

Radiation is a minor problem, too. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is still sending out signals. Thirty-two years and counting.

Perhaps you're only trying to discuss manned missions using today's technology, but that's kind of silly in a thread starting off with a critique of a science fiction movie.

I believe in the original vampire legends, the potential vampire had to drink the blood of the vampire. Vampires could feed at will, and selectively "breed".


The first two Terminator movies did a pretty good job, IMO, although they weren't focused primarily on the time-travel aspects. You ought to rent Primer as well. 12 Monkeys didn't do too badly.

Again, your imagination is too limited. You're too focused on history, and what we already know, to be able to imagine the future and what we don't know.

Far being silly, it's very much to the point in a thread about science fiction movies. We plan to send about a half a dozen people to Mars (if it every actually gets off the ground) and they'll be in space for a few months. That's a far cry from the implied contention that thousands or even tens of thousands of aliens arrived here from planets which are far, far away. That's the sort of order of magnitude that turns your "bump in the road" into the Grand Canyon.

Of course, the most easily advanced objection to this remark of yours is that a trip to Mars is not interstellar travel.

Voyager doesn't have any meat machines on board--i'd have thought that objection would have recommended itself to you before you posted such nonsense.

The thread concerns itself with the plausibility of science fiction in motion pictures. That's fiction in 84 point all caps, and science in 6 point all lowercase. Star Wars has to be one of the most ridiculous sci fi pictures ever filmed from that point of view. Millenium Falcon allegedly delivers four meat machines and two robots over parsecs of deep space without any apparent provision for microgravity (they don't even try to suggest free fall microgravity conditions) or cosmic radiation. It was an oater set in outer space. I fully understand Joe's comments about consistency within the terms of the story, but something like Star Wars just goes too far toward the totally ridiculous end of the spectrum. One of the finest lines in movie sci fi promotion is from the original Alien motion picture, the one to the effect that "In space, no one can hear you scream." The people who made the Star Wars series seem not to have gotten that memo. And, the Alien series is not immune to such silliness either. In Alien Resurrection, a shameless exploitation film, when the aliens have lunched all the remaining military personnel, the leader of the "pirate" crew asks the surviving evil scientist how long before they reach earth. He replies three hours. Three hours ? ! ? ! ? At that distance, the joker could have looked out the window and figured it out for himself. Nor could the pirate space craft reasonably have left the military vessel and plunged immediately into the atmosphere of Earth.

I understand that this doesn't spoil the movies for most viewers--hell, in a series which is mostly as good as the Alien series was, it doesn't spoil it for me. But that doesn't make any of it plausible.

Large scale interstellar travel involving meat machines will require enormous resources to deal with microgravity and cosmic radiation. In the case of large scale interstellar travel, these are hardly to be described as bumps in the road.

Oh no, you're the one with the limited imagination here. The human race developed metallurgy more than five thousand years ago. We've reached the point at which interstellar space faring might be possible only now. Perhaps, though, you think of the human race as a collective slow child playing.

Your scenario either imagines a hive queen who lives for thousands of years, directing the members of the hive in the development of the necessary technology after having, apparently on a whim, become possessed of a desire to launch interstellar space travel. Either that, or you would need generation after generation of hive queens dedicated to that end. You have also failed to consider the implications of breaking with hive tradition to encourage individual, innovative thought, while continuing to maintain complete control of the hive members and their activities. Innovative thinkers are not likely to be happy being drones in a hive.

Being able to imagine something is not evidence that it is either possible, or even probable, and it certainly is no basis upon which to assume that it is plausible.

I don't think you have a concept of how big the universe actually is, or how long the universe has been around and will be around.

Five thousand years is a grain of sand on a long, long beach.

Are you really trying to put a limit on what humans will be able to create in 200 years? They already have 3D "printers" that can make parts and tools out of dust. These devices are already in the price range of a basic minivan or SUV. In a few years, these things will be as ubiquitous as inkjet printers are, today. (Although I don't want to think about the price of "ink cartidges" at that point....)

Of course it isn't. But we have the technology today that we can use to protect astronauts from microgravity.

Of course Star Wars is silly from a technological point of view. Wizards with magic swords that kill death-star dragons and rescue princesses. It's fun, but silly. Strawman on your part.

Try 2001: A Space Odyssey if you want your science fiction more "real".


I'm not trying to limit the discussion to meat machines; that's a convenient limitation on the discussion that you're attempting to introduce. We're discussing different methods of interstellar exploration, are we not?

It is precisely because i have a good conception of the size of the universe that i find these theses so implausible. The nearest star to our Sol is, i believe, seven light years away. Therefore, so send a "manned" expedition there at a significant fraction of the speed of light (assuming for the sake of discussion, and only for the sake of discussion, that we will achieve this any time soon, even within 200 years), such as 80%, would still require that the participants have provision for nine years of microgravity and exposure to cosmic radiation. That's why what you describe as bumps in the road are really very, very deep canyons to be crossed.

The point about five thousand years is to point up just how long your hive queen would likely have to live, or just how many generations of hive queens would have to pursue the same goal, while maintaining complete control of the hive despite encouraging innovative thought, in order to arrive at a level of technological sophistication necessary for interstellar space faring.

Believe me when i say that i've been giving a great deal of thought to the alleged Fermi paradox for more than 30 years. The idea of a hive society is one of the first things which occurred to me, and therefore, one of the first ideas which i was able to logically shoot down.

I'm not putting any limits on anything. But societies can do and always will put limits on how their resources will be deployed, and it ought to be abundantly clear after 50 years of space programs that society, either our society, or the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Japanese, or the Europeans, have little interest in deploying huge amounts of resources for ventures off the planet.

Interstellar space faring involving thousands of meat machines represents an off-planet venture on a scale which would require virtually all of the planets "disposable" resources for a very long time. I doubt that it will happen in 200 years, or even 2000 years. It might happen some day, but i sincerely doubt that it will happen any time soon. If it happens, it will very likely be as a result of incremental efforts over a very long period of time.

There is good inferential evidence that the Irish reached and set up a modest colony on Greenland as long ago as the seventh century. More likely, though, it was not until the late eighth century, and response to the scourge of the Norse. Erik Raudi (Erik the Red) did not explore Greenland and Baffin Island until 981-984. He set up his Greenland colony in 985. Bjarni Herjolfsson coasted the Newfoundland coast late in that year, but it was not until twelve years later that Leif Eriksson consulted with Bjarni, and sailed directly to Newfoundland, where he found his "Vinland the Good." It was five years or more until Thorfinn Karlsefni, Thorvald Eriksson and Freydis Eriksdottir set out on their own expedition to find Leif's Vinland. (Leif was pouting and wouldn't tell them at what latitude it lay--they never found it.)

Basque, English and Portuguese whalers, sealers and fisherman began to exploit the Grand Banks and Belle Isle Strait in the 15th and 16th centuries, and landed on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland to salt down their catches. A Dutch whaler which landed near Herjolfness in southern Greenland in the mid-15the century found the corpse of what was probably the last surviving Norse resident. The English did not establish a genuine colony on Newfoundland until 1610.

The technology was not lacking. In fact, the Norse ship, the knorr, with which all of the voyages--Erik Raudi, Bjarni Herjolfsson, Thorfinn Karlsefni--were made, was superior to anything which would be produced for five or six hundred years. In the 1890s, the Norwegians built a replica of the Gokstad ship, a type known as a karva, which was a cross between the knorr and a viking long ship (viking long ships were a sailor's nightmare, and no sailor in his right mind would go to sea in one, they were only good for coasting voyages--but the karva resolved many of their fatal flaws). The Norwegians sailed it to North America for the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Sailing form Bergen on April 30, 1893, they reached Newfoundland on May 27th--a cruise most Newfoundland schooner captains would have been proud to have made. In the 1930s, another replica of a Norse ship was built, a 60 foot knorr (most of the larger sea-trading knorrs were 100 foot ships). Like the Gokstad replica, it was made of the same materials as the original, and rigged and sailed exactly as those were. It sailed exactly on the course that Columbus followed in 1492, and beat his sailing time by almost one third--they routinely ran off the same number of nautical miles in three days that it took Columbus four or four and half days to accomplish.

The technology was not lacking--the will to make the effort was the problem. Even religious fervor was not enough. The last European expedition to Greenland before the Basque and Portuguese fishermen arrived on the scene was sent in the 14th century to find out if it were true that the Greenlanders had turned pagan. The expedition never returned (some scholars believe that this expedition made the Kennsington Stone which was found in Minnesota), and no further efforts were made to find the Greenlanders, or to send out a bishop or any more priests.

It was not until John Cabot's 1497 voyage reported that the cod were so thick on the Grand Banks that you could get out and walk that any European power became interested (a little hyperbole is understandable under the circumstances). Even then, it was more than 80 years before England claimed Newfoundland, and more than a century before a colony was even established.

Now you can argue all you want against the lessons of history, but the point is that these matters are not determined by technology nor the state of advancement of science. They don't even need to be. The Norse couild not find longitude, they didn't have compasses and they didn't even have an astrolabe--they used a notched stick to find latitude, and that's what Leif Eriksson used to find his Vinland after he talked to Bjarni Herjolfsson. The delay of literally centuries was occassioned by European rulers who had other things on their minds, and who had populations who were equally uninterested, and whose wishes had to be taken into consideration, whether or not kings claimed to rule by divine right.

So if you can explain to me how you can get the people of this planet to agree to extraordinary sacrifices of money, time and other resources for two centuries in order to send an expedition into the wild black yonder, maybe i'll believe that something like that will be accomplished in 200 years. Like it or not, our own experience is all we have to go on. And the outlook form that vantage point ain't good.

That's no strawman--you were the one who advanced an expedition to Mars as evidence of how easy it would be to accomplish interstellar travel despite microgravity and cosmic radiation, so i was pointing out that a trip to Mars ain't interstellar travel. As for Star Wars, that's exactly the point of this thread, in case you've forgotten.



No. We're discussing the plausibility of science fiction motion pictures. Now certainly that can bring into the discussion interstellar travel, but i was not introducing any limitations to the discussion. If you want to discuss interstellar travel, in the context of the plausibility of science fiction motion pictures, then you're going to be faced with supporting the plausibility of thousands of meat machines traversing vast distances in space over long periods of time, or you're going to have to admit that it's implausible. Certainly arguments based on a trip to Mars or the Voyager mission don't apply do a discussion of interstellar travel by meat machines.

If you want to discuss the alleged Fermi paradox, i'm willing, although Gunga Dim might object that that were a diversion of the thread. Not that that would bother me much.

Wrong belief, Set.

The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri at 4.24 light years.

Then we have 3 stars at a distance under 7 light years, 8 under 10 light years and 12 under 11 light years...

I certainly enjoyed 2001, but there's no way i'd accept a claim that it was scientifically plausible. They did go to more trouble to introduce verisimilitude, but it's still full of silliness.

You're still looking too far in the past, Set. Try looking at what's been accomplished in the 20th century, and the last decade, if you really want to understand what kind of changes we can expect in the next 50 years.

Mind you, I'm not predicting interstellar travel in 50 years, but it will not require a world-wide push for 200 years to accomplish it. All we have to do is wait for the technology to be created for its own sake, and in 200 years they'll have kits to build your own interstellar craft from an asteroid.

Hah ! ! !

It took us ten years to put two men on the moon. It's been almost 40 years since we sent anyone to the moon. If we really wanted to make a serious effort just to explore this star system we live in, the moon is the obvious base from which to do it. We have no plans to go back there, and i don't think you can expect the Russians, or the other Europeans, or the Japanese or the Chinese to be heading there any time soon. (Mind you, the Chinese could surprise us. I'd put my money on them coming up with the next "real" space program. I rather think our plans for Mars are just pipe dreams.)

The saga sources are rather confused about geography, so it's not certain, but Ari Marsson probably landed on Greenland (by shipwreck, not by intent) in about 985, although i think it might have been earlier. Erik Raudi was related to him by marriage, and undoubtedly had the story from his in-laws. Ari Marsson's story is one of the inferential sources for Irish colonists on Greenland. Erik himself would not have gone there if he hadn't been outlawed for manslaughter (a euphemism the Norse used for outright bloody murder, allowing them to avoid awkward things like law enforcement). He literally had to run for his life from Iceland, which is how he ended up in Greenland in 981. The fact that he did not go to the part of Greenland (the east coast) which Icelanders normally visited to hunt sea mammals, and that he headed directly for the west coast is part of the inferential evidence that he had Ari Marsson's story from the in-laws.

So, if the Irish did colonize Greenland, and in the late 8th century as suggested by the inferential evidence (such as a 9th century petition to the Pope to provide priests for "Cronusland," the name the Greeks gave to Greenland more than 2000 years ago), that means it was two centuries before the Norse showed up to colonize, and that was only because Erik Thorvaldsson had to get out of Dodge after murdering some folks in Iceland.

As i say, it's been 40 years since we sent anyone to the moon, and the Mars expedition is all smoke and mirrors at this point. Do you really wonder that i think it unlikely that we'll get very far in the next 200 years?

I would suggest a copy of Julien Jaynes' "Origins of Consciousness". What Jaynes had to say wasn't fiction and it isn't that much of a step from Jaynes' description of the world of the Iliad to a world in which consciousness itself was communal, and not on an individual basis.

And strangely that is true when it come to economic truths.

Societies can no more break economic laws then a man can fly by breaking Newton laws.