Flight of Fancy

18 May, ‘07


I’m going to wander far afield from my usual ranting about politics and instead take a short flight of fancy about the future. Consider a few science fiction subjects for a moment, whence they came, and where they might take us. I don’t know of anyone who isn’t at least somewhat familiar with the TV show “Star Trek”, its assorted spin-offs, and the various movies. Generally they’re easy to follow, entertaining, and they don’t really try to present some deep social message, being just the kind of TV program I’ll watch on occasion. To make their story lines plausible, the writers have developed quite a line of “Star Trek Physics”, including all sorts of futuristic gadgets that perform miraculous feats, such as faster than light travel via the “Warp Engines”, along with an endless source of power by way of anti-matter and “Dilithium crystals”. Then we have the “Transporter” that beams people all over whatever planet we’re visiting this episode, they have voice addressed computers, a “Replicator” that can instantly manufacture a new uniform (or a hot cup of coffee) on command, and of course that wondrous replacement for six-shooters or Buck Rogers ray guns, the “Phaser”.

I often talk to people all over the world by way of the Internet. Many of those folks are educators, scientists, engineers and technicians from a wide assortment of fields having to do with spaceflight and some rather futuristic scientific investigation as well. Generally they enjoy Star Trek for many of the same reasons I do, but I’m very cautious in speaking to them about the science and physics of Star Trek, as some of them get really upset when you compare their pet theories, or mainstream scientific beliefs, to “crackpot science” and “impossible” doings.

Back at the turn of the twentieth century it was generally accepted by scientists that Physics research was a dead field, as we had already learned “all there was to know about the physical world”. The Wright brothers were belittled in the press, as it was a well known fact that it’s physically impossible for man to fly. It was also believed physiologically impossible for the human body to withstand the stress of travel at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour. (At one time it was speeds of over five miles an hour!) In the early twentieth century everyone “knew” that rockets couldn’t fly in space because there was nothing for them to push against. I suspect those were the same people who insisted the world was flat, despite Columbus’s little yacht trip. That the Moon is made of green cheese was still believed by many people until Apollo 11 brought back a box of moon rocks. In the late 1940’s, President Truman’s science advisor insisted that it was impossible to put anything into Earth orbit, as no rocket imaginable could possibly carry that much fuel. A very few years later Sputnik was flying over our heads every ninety minutes or so.

Enter the world of Science Fiction, before it became the realm of dungeons and dragons, witches and warlocks, and a few hyperactive vampires. The first artificial Earth satellite was described in a science fiction story titled “The Brick Moon”, written in the 1860’s. Shortly thereafter Jules Verne wrote about man’s first trip to the moon, and also mentioned nuclear power. Robert Heinlein did an excellent job of describing the technical difficulties of leaving the Earth, reaching the planets of our solar system, and living on them, in the early 1950’s. Later he described fully a functional nuclear powered rocket fifteen years before NASA began building and testing them. Isaac Asimov described a futuristic human society and the problems of living with intelligent machines. Arthur C. Clarke described communications satellites in the 1940’s. In the 1960’s he described a “Space Elevator”, which is today being developed by a Seattle based aerospace firm. Fantasy and wild dreams? Perhaps. Heinlein was a graduate of the US naval academy at Annapolis, and a highly trained engineer. Asimov was a professor of bio-chemistry at Boston College. Clarke was a British electrical engineer who was instrumental in developing radar during WW II.

Star Trek as Sci-Fi is a lot of fun, along with being the freely admitted inspiration to a lot of today’s scientists. And many of those gadgets, impossible as they are, may not be all that impossible, or that far in the future either! “Warp Drive” engines and faster-than-light travel? Well, in Einstein’s relativistic universe nothing can travel faster than light. But Quantum Mechanics indicates that it is quite possible to exceed light speed. NASA is presently doing laboratory experiments with a rotating magnetic field “warp drive” system that might make the stars accessible to us after all. I haven’t figured out just what a Dilithium crystal is, but anti-mater certainly exists, and many of the technical problems involved in its use as a power source have been solved. The problem is in gathering enough of it in one place to be usable, without an accident vaporizing half the planet!

Scotty’s transporter might be coming down the pike as well. The University of Vienna recently demonstrated the electromagnetic transmission of matter! On a sub-atomic scale of course, but apparently it did work. We’ve also got a “replicator” of sorts. A British company is marketing a computer printer that “prints” solid objects. Called a “Fabber”, its capabilities are somewhat limited at the moment, but are being rapidly developed. The couch potatoes dream… “Hey computer, whip me up a cigar and a bottle of beer.” And voice addressed computers are also on the market today. Those of us who were around in the 1950’s should remember many of the “Car of the future” and “Home of the future” predictions. Stop and think about it and you’ll see that nearly everything predicted back in those days are available to us right now, if we can afford them.

The twin worlds of science and technology are making tremendous strides in our modern times, and give every indication of producing a number of near miracles in the not so distant future. And it’s not just physics and spaceflight either. Medicine, communications, transportation, energy, and even manufacturing are all seeing tremendous strides forward. If the politicians don’t wreck things first, I’m quite optimistic about our grandkids inhabiting a wondrous world that we of today would be very hard pressed to recognize.

I grumble and growl a lot whenever learned people make pontifical declarations of this or that or the other thing being impossible. They of all people should well know that nothing is really impossible to the human mind, it’s just that we haven’t learned how to do it… yet.