Greetings good citizen, as an author I have 'experimented' with a variety of concepts. When 'dry-running' these ideas, the mind travels along some strange paths. While it isn't official, NASA has ceased it's space program (as the capitalists have moved THEIR manufacturing capacity from the US to the less envoronmentally cautious People's Republic of China.
As you might guess, this thought experiment led to the inevitable 'Capitalists in space' story where 'the final frontier is finally opened up after an accident with a force field generator experiment creates FTL travel.
You know the drill good citizen, the instant we gain the capability to to travel to distant stars in a 'reasonable' timeframe those twinkling lights in the night sky become 'Real Estate'.
So my short story 'The Eye of Orion' was born. [You can buy my collection of short stories titled Big Questions from Amazon.com and if you have a kindle [or download the free kindle app] you'll only pay .99 cents! If you're a Kindle select customer you can get it FREE!
But enough marketing, back to the future! In a sort of 'cut their own throat' misstep, colonizing our celestial neighborhood would be cost prohibitive and the time frames involved would be gargantuan. We could do it but ROI would be in the fourth decimal place, cost-wise. [Not that it actually matters.]
Cracking the light barrier is the first step in a mission we (sorry, because the oligarchs are looking to the future it's easy to fall into the trap the it's being done for us all...my bad) have already expended billions in the search for another 'habitable' planet, When we find a suitable one we will launch a mission to explore/colonize this (hopefully) virgin world.
In my fiction story the planet they find is closer in fact that it was on paper and only took three weeks to get to. Handy because it wouldn't take a lifetime to get there and should it prove inhabited, another lifetime to wave off follow-up missions. This also allowed them the leisure to park in orbit and observe the planet for signs of (intelligent) life and to test the atmosphere for potential pathogens...which, in my story, prove no match for our germs.
Not only does the intrepid 'Baron' (this is just keeping it real, if you're NOT an oligarch, your NOT getting your hands on classified military technology for zip...like this guy does...because he's a Baron!) seizes the technology used to build the first interstellar transport(s) he also uses 'creative financing' to fund the mission and gets the courts to provide legal ownership of the entire planet [ostentatiously to 'protect the investors'...of course!]
Then we arrive at the transportation arrangements themselves. The 'nobles' could buy passage on the ship and cruise in luxury to vist their holdings in the sky but the 'hired help' was placed in suspended animation and slabbed into the cargo hold for their 3 week journey. The practical considerations here are the trip would be instantanous for the travelers and they wouldn't need food or sanitary facilities...or require a large security contingent to, er, 'safeguard the ship.'
While the ships (on paper) cost a kings ransom to build, they ran on gravity, which is free. That didn't stop the Baron from charging (whatever the traffic would bear) for a three week nap and a job at the end of the ride. While the nobles [people rich enough to buy titles from the Eye of Orion corporation, the Baron just happened to inherit one here on earth.] could come and go as they pleased [and most of them could be bothered, they didn't care.] It was a one way trip for the average technician.
Imagine being stranded on a planet forty light years from Earth with a 'management team' operating under the same 'principals' they exercise here?
Like the current exercise in 'bad judgement' [the one-way trip to colonize Mars] our protagonist The Baron nor ANY of his 'backers' personally make the trip to their 'goldmine in the sky', everything they need/care about is here...and space travel in notoriously hazardous.
Worse, having 'high net worth' individuals on board increases the danger of 'mishap' exponentially. {Thanks to our insane inheritance laws.)
The significance of this should not be lost on anyone, especialy the marks that plunked their money down for a one-way trip to a gulag in space.
Once there the Eye of Orion corporation LLC evaporated. The job promised at the other end of the ride was provided by the other nobles wishing to attract 'settlers' to their fiefs...so they could TAX them.
Naturally, never going there meant all they knew about operations/conditions on the colony came from underlings that had a vested interest in not 'rocking the boat'. All the management team had to say was 'you'll never see Earth again' to anyone that got too ardent about reporting the 'heavy-handed' treatment of the, er, 'prisoners'. A term the management team used regularly among themselves when referring to the fools who paid good money only to find themselves 40 light years from the nearest judge.
While some of you may be shocked at the idea 'man's 'inhumanity' to man is legendary'...and if left unchecked, will follow us off planet.
The advantage of being 'the god of the story' is I was able to provide a 'happy ending', the Baron, once he learns of the horrors he's brought upon people that trusted him leads the charge against the other nobles and, well, you'll need to buy the book to find out how things settle.
I believe most will agree, seeking out habitable planets [considering the investment it will take to reach even the 'closest' one.] is far preferable to the costly and dangerous colonization of the hostile environemts offered by our nearby neighbors.
I have the advantage of writing fiction, I could create a habitable planet as close to earth as I wished...because it wasn't the 'habitable planet' aspect that was central to my story.
It was the batshit crazy humans and the 'baggage' they'll carry with them as they set out to trek among the stars!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
As you might guess, this thought experiment led to the inevitable 'Capitalists in space' story where 'the final frontier is finally opened up after an accident with a force field generator experiment creates FTL travel.
You know the drill good citizen, the instant we gain the capability to to travel to distant stars in a 'reasonable' timeframe those twinkling lights in the night sky become 'Real Estate'.
So my short story 'The Eye of Orion' was born. [You can buy my collection of short stories titled Big Questions from Amazon.com and if you have a kindle [or download the free kindle app] you'll only pay .99 cents! If you're a Kindle select customer you can get it FREE!
But enough marketing, back to the future! In a sort of 'cut their own throat' misstep, colonizing our celestial neighborhood would be cost prohibitive and the time frames involved would be gargantuan. We could do it but ROI would be in the fourth decimal place, cost-wise. [Not that it actually matters.]
Cracking the light barrier is the first step in a mission we (sorry, because the oligarchs are looking to the future it's easy to fall into the trap the it's being done for us all...my bad) have already expended billions in the search for another 'habitable' planet, When we find a suitable one we will launch a mission to explore/colonize this (hopefully) virgin world.
In my fiction story the planet they find is closer in fact that it was on paper and only took three weeks to get to. Handy because it wouldn't take a lifetime to get there and should it prove inhabited, another lifetime to wave off follow-up missions. This also allowed them the leisure to park in orbit and observe the planet for signs of (intelligent) life and to test the atmosphere for potential pathogens...which, in my story, prove no match for our germs.
Not only does the intrepid 'Baron' (this is just keeping it real, if you're NOT an oligarch, your NOT getting your hands on classified military technology for zip...like this guy does...because he's a Baron!) seizes the technology used to build the first interstellar transport(s) he also uses 'creative financing' to fund the mission and gets the courts to provide legal ownership of the entire planet [ostentatiously to 'protect the investors'...of course!]
Then we arrive at the transportation arrangements themselves. The 'nobles' could buy passage on the ship and cruise in luxury to vist their holdings in the sky but the 'hired help' was placed in suspended animation and slabbed into the cargo hold for their 3 week journey. The practical considerations here are the trip would be instantanous for the travelers and they wouldn't need food or sanitary facilities...or require a large security contingent to, er, 'safeguard the ship.'
While the ships (on paper) cost a kings ransom to build, they ran on gravity, which is free. That didn't stop the Baron from charging (whatever the traffic would bear) for a three week nap and a job at the end of the ride. While the nobles [people rich enough to buy titles from the Eye of Orion corporation, the Baron just happened to inherit one here on earth.] could come and go as they pleased [and most of them could be bothered, they didn't care.] It was a one way trip for the average technician.
Imagine being stranded on a planet forty light years from Earth with a 'management team' operating under the same 'principals' they exercise here?
Like the current exercise in 'bad judgement' [the one-way trip to colonize Mars] our protagonist The Baron nor ANY of his 'backers' personally make the trip to their 'goldmine in the sky', everything they need/care about is here...and space travel in notoriously hazardous.
Worse, having 'high net worth' individuals on board increases the danger of 'mishap' exponentially. {Thanks to our insane inheritance laws.)
The significance of this should not be lost on anyone, especialy the marks that plunked their money down for a one-way trip to a gulag in space.
Once there the Eye of Orion corporation LLC evaporated. The job promised at the other end of the ride was provided by the other nobles wishing to attract 'settlers' to their fiefs...so they could TAX them.
Naturally, never going there meant all they knew about operations/conditions on the colony came from underlings that had a vested interest in not 'rocking the boat'. All the management team had to say was 'you'll never see Earth again' to anyone that got too ardent about reporting the 'heavy-handed' treatment of the, er, 'prisoners'. A term the management team used regularly among themselves when referring to the fools who paid good money only to find themselves 40 light years from the nearest judge.
While some of you may be shocked at the idea 'man's 'inhumanity' to man is legendary'...and if left unchecked, will follow us off planet.
The advantage of being 'the god of the story' is I was able to provide a 'happy ending', the Baron, once he learns of the horrors he's brought upon people that trusted him leads the charge against the other nobles and, well, you'll need to buy the book to find out how things settle.
I believe most will agree, seeking out habitable planets [considering the investment it will take to reach even the 'closest' one.] is far preferable to the costly and dangerous colonization of the hostile environemts offered by our nearby neighbors.
I have the advantage of writing fiction, I could create a habitable planet as close to earth as I wished...because it wasn't the 'habitable planet' aspect that was central to my story.
It was the batshit crazy humans and the 'baggage' they'll carry with them as they set out to trek among the stars!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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