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The problem with sleeper ships

⁨1252⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨memes@sopuli.xyz⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b45bd4a7-637c-4798-b878-e6756413c459.jpeg

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  • MudMan@fedia.io ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It's a good argument against trying sleeper/generation ships.

    In practice, though, the actual sleepers would be so happy to arrive to find a nice McDonalds and a charming small town instead of shuttling down into the middle of uninhabited Arrakis with a 3D printer and a prayer.

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    • voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      In practice, though, the actual sleepers would be so happy to arrive to find a nice McDonalds and a charming small town instead of shuttling down into the middle of uninhabited Arrakis with a 3D printer and a prayer.

      As a guy who sometimes gets told “Hey, don’t worry about that work you had to do, you can skip it”, hard agree. No better feeling in the world. And after thinking you’d have to build a whole civilisation from scratch? Yeah, nah, sign me up for the generation ship please.

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      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A generation ship and a sleeper ship are two different things (that we can’t yet do). In one, you live on a ship so your kids can go to a new place. In the other, you don’t really live on a ship so you can go to a new place.

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      • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Imagine if a lost Spanish armada finally arrived at Florida, centuries late, musket-wielding conquistadors raiding a coastal naval academy while a prominent political VIP was giving a speech, taking them hostage like Hernán Cortés did with Moctezuma II (Aztec Empire) or Francisco Pizarro with Atahualpa (Inca Empire).

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    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      find a nice McDonalds

      Going back to the sleep pod for another 50k years.

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      • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Only the finest restaurant for me. Tonight, we dine at Taco Bell

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    • Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’d argue the type of people who sign up to be first on an extra-solar planet to settle are exactly the kind of people who would rather shuttle down with a printer and a prayer than find a small town.

      I mean, if I were to sign on, I would want to know what the settlement plan is (Like who’s doing what jobs, how will we produce food assuming there is 0 viable land to grow on, what’s the worst case scenario that has been planned for, etc) as well as having a say in said plan… And I know plenty of people who would happily sign on knowing it’s gonna be just them, a tarp, and a Gransfors Bruks axe vs everything the planet can throw at them and they might die inside a week if they aren’t careful.

      And yeah, I imagine if I showed up and all the super hard work was done but everything was still getting started, I’d probably be a little more upbeat. But in no way would I want to see a planet filled with people who got there first. Worse yet, got there by being the 8th generation to be born there.

      I guess it depends what stage of the colonization effort you’re on. People signing on for the tail end would be ecstatic, probably.

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    • Thorry84@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      But is it a good argument? What are the chances a new technologies will be invented that allow for ships that are actually substantially faster? And what are the chances of some conflict or disaster or combination preventing any ships from being built regardless of how fast those ships are?

      My view is: As soon as technology is ready there’s an actual 1% chance of a successful mission, launch right away. And keep on launching till you can’t launch anymore. Sure maybe something better will come along, but maybe it won’t. If the window of opportunity is open, don’t wait for it to close.

      But in reality I don’t actually think interstellar travel for living humans is possible. There are so many issues, it’s hard to see us overcoming us all. But maybe the state of the world has left me jaded and the future will be bright somehow, who knows. I’d love to be proven wrong, but for now I lean of the side of impossible.

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      • MudMan@fedia.io ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You kind of answer your own question there, honestly. If you're at the point where you can somehow convince hundreds to thousands of people to get a one way ticket to turning into a space popsicle for the chance of eventually turning into xenomorph chowder, then you can probably also do better than that eventually.

        So from that perspective we both hard agree that interstellar travel is probably not practical to any degree of technology below full-on Star Trek. But also, we both hard disagree that "shoot people into space to die as soon as you have the ability" is something that any society is ever going to do. If some modicum of a survival instinct is needed to evolve intelligence, then the answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens looked at the practicalities of actual interstellar travel and went "Hell, no".

        If anybody out there is willing to do interstellar colonization you better believe that it's because their star is about to pop and they'll try that exactly once.

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      • pretzelz@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        There is also the possibility of information transfer so the people on board the ship (or an automaton) could enhance the vessel and make it faster mid flight

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    • Artyom@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As a rule of thumb, I’m never happy to find a McDonalds.

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      • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Why waste your hate on it? I haven’t had McDonald’s in over 25 years now and it causes me no problems to just go past one and not think about it

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    • nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i mean, you better hope the civilization you find is a good one.

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    • makyo@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what I was thinking - so I got the free cryro without the hard work?

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    • jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Humans being humans, I bet there would end up being some huge animosity between the two groups.

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      • MudMan@fedia.io ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean, we're halfway through... not sure if a novel, but it's surely like a young adult TV show or the setup for a looter shooter or something.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s a good argument against trying sleeper/generation ships.

      But then you never send out ships.

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      • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The obvious solution to this is to just not send the faster shios to the new planet, or do but use it as a hub for further travel, and let the sleeper ship people fulfill their literal purpose.

        Celebrate them and support them theres more planets why even bother?

        The sleeper ship people would be going to a planet chosen because it was able, the faster ship people would likely be able to choose a better planet anyway.

        But also could just meet up with that sleeper ship and like take them with you

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    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      shuttling down into the middle of uninhabited Arrakis with a 3D printer and a prayer.

      Dune: Fremen Origin, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson.

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  • becausechemistry@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Worse: your sleeper ship arrives at what should be a pristine planet. But FTL capable ships beat you there. And they ruined the planet over a few thousand years. And now they’re sending out refugee ships of their own.

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    • Krauerking@lemy.lol ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Damn now that’s an interesting story

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      • becausechemistry@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Admission: I stole it.

        qntm’s cool science fiction stories are my favorite.

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      • BakerBagel@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Basically the premise of Mass Effect Andromeda

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      • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        There’s a side quest chain in Starfield that has a generation ship arriving at a planet they claimed centuries ago only to find it’s a corporate owned resort planet.

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      • jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Maybe that’s what happened to us already.

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    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Children of Earth is sort of like that. Amazing book.

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      • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Children of Time, not Earth! Also gets my highest recommendation.

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  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I really don’t see the problem here. They did all the hard work for you and they probably all pity you.

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    • Frozengyro@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yup, civilization is already set up and you don’t need to scrape by in the wild for the rest of your life. Plus you get 3000 years of memes to catch up on!

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      • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        3,000 year steam backlog

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      • LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Imagine how pissed someone who wanted to get away from civilization via the generation ship would feel

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      • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Buddy that’s all I wanted to do.

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    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What even is the alternative? Wait 50 years and be too old for space travel?

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  • nm0i@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There was a sci-novel about that, I don’t remember who wrote it. Essentially, after FTL got invented they caught up with generation ships and retro-fitted them with FTL drives; overall message of the story was that humans are a valuable resource and they should not be discarded lightly, especially in a mission to seed the galaxy.

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    • Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      message of the story was that humans are a valuable resource

      HA! Fiction indeed.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Sometimes I’ll be in an office building, or on a job site, or in a hospital room, or even just taking a big shit.

        And I’ll look around and think to myself “Everything here is man made. It all comes from people.” And then I’ll just kinda marvel at the productive and transformative nature of human beings.

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      • Spacehooks@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They made it make sense in the outer worlds

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    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It happens in Star Trek. They find a 1980s style businessman on board, who is apopleptic to learn that humanity doesn’t care about investment portfolios anymore.

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      • teft@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The Neutral Zone (the episode in question) has people that died and then were frozen to try and revive later. The space capsule was in orbit above a planet not en route to another planet. Not exactly the same situation.

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      • IMongoose@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        At least he didn’t have boneitis.

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      • Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        you don’t need money anymore, everything is free and you can do whatever you want.

        "Damn it! How am I going to be better than people then?

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      • buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It wasn’t a ship full of people heading to a distant star, that was a bunch of dead people who were frozen at the moment for their death in hopes that sometime in the future a cure for their ailment would be found and then they were set adrift in space.

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    • frigidaphelion@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There is an aspect of the plot in Alastair Reynold’s novel Chasm City (part of the Revelation Space series) that also has to do with this concept.

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      • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think it was the planet called …

        spoiler

        … Sky’s Edge, if I recall correctly. Except the “new tech” was not FTL (not a thing in Revelation Space canon) but the practice of ejecting a significant fraction of colonists and their supplies in order to get a few years “edge” in lead time over other generation ships of a fleet to build up military forces to raid the slower latecomers.

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    • PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Heinlein wrote one with a similar (though not the same) idea

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    • Gert@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Galaxy’s Edge

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  • MNByChoice@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or you know, this is discussed in advance and the faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way (if possible).

    I get the world is a shit show, but it is less so when we discuss.

    Fun meme though.

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    • leisesprecher@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Given the brittleness of civilization, chances are the backup tapes with the exact flight planes get lost during a thunderstorm and 50 years later nobody remembers this ship even exists.

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      • MNByChoice@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        50 years is terribly short. 500 maybe.

        Also, resolvable. Space beacons, stone tablets, etc.

        If you can think of it, so can they.

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        50 years later nobody remembers this ship even exists

        Famously, nobody knows about the Apollo Moon mission today, because we lost all the records from 60 years ago.

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      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        brittleness of civilization? last i checked civilization has managed to survive 12’000 years since it first came about.

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    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Or you know, this is discussed in advance and the faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way (if possible).

      Or in an infinite universe just go to a different planet.

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    • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If we assume that the ship, while traveling, always moves towards its destination, but it might be off by up to 1 degree. Then the margin of error for its position would grow until about the midway point in the journey. I have no idea how to calculate this, unfortunately, but I’d image there’d be a lot of space you need to cover if you want to find the ship.

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      • MNByChoice@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yes. That is a problem. Not least of all for the sleeper ship.

        I am going to assume any higher technology follow-up ship will only do best effort.

        So, then there is a good window for memes about “lost” sleeper ships.

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    • Hupf@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way

      That’s not how space travel works, at all, unfortunately.

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      • skeezix@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        With 2 jumps it is. Jump to calculated position of old ship. Load cryo beds onto new ship. Jump to destination.

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  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Wow. This is actually the plot for one of the side quests in Starfield.

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    • abbotsbury@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s actually a pretty common sci fi scenario, I remember reading about it in a pop science book in school

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      • IMongoose@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It was in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, or in the series at least. His scenario was two warring planets sending out armadas to fight each other, but while they were on their way faster ships were created and sent so when they got there the battle was already over.

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    • curiousaur@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s a widely talked about issue with deep space travel.

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    • Naz@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s stolen from Elite: Dangerous. You can find a few of those colony ships drifting around deep space, but you’re warned with heavy penalties to not interact with them, for this exact reason.

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      • androogee@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Mm yes they definitely stole this decades old concept from 2014’s Elite Dangerous.

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    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
      There is a recent-ish game that uses this exact premise

      Outriders

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  • atro_city@fedia.io ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Imagine trying to escape humanity only to end up being surrounded by humans again. Nightmare fuel.

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    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Touch grass. Don’t hate people.

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      • PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Go fuck yourself bud

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    • blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what humanity is best at though. It should be no surprise.

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    When your daughter looks like this

    1000002731

    Sorry to soon

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    • urda@lebowski.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      MURPH

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    • Thorry84@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oof, right in the feels

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  • TallonMetroid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you have working FTL now, though, and can get there faster why not also intercept the sleeper ships and bring them with you?

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  • SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or you arrive to find the civilization has had time to collapse and given way to the rise of damned dirty apes.

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Such a plot device has been used in every sci-fi universe I’ve been interested in. It’s not even funny.

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  • mlg@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Elite Dangerous players flying loops around generation ships while listening to their horror downfall logs.

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  • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And for the only time in your life, you’re SO well rested!

    Oof, what if it turned out you get 3000 years of nightmares and wake up insane?

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  • unsubtle@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Outriders. Absolutely underrated game

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  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m surprised this isn’t the central plot device of some blockbuster property.

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  • airbreather@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Attempts to prevent this phenomenon involve using what is called the “wait calculation” to predict how long to wait to launch an interstellar journey.

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  • argh_another_username@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    ECS Constant in Starfield.

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  • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But you’d also be 50 years older so there’s that

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  • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They didn’t dock and help you out? Rude.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s a neat idea from a sci-fi perspective, but when you think about the most efficient forms of space propulsion (slingshots around large gravity wells) I’m not sure how we’ll manage to do much better.

    Either you catch up to someone before they leave the solar system or you’re just going to shorted the time needed to reach their terminal velocity.

    There’s a diminishing return as you approach the speed of light, and FTL travel isn’t exactly a trivial hurdle.

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  • troglodytis@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s still likely the only way you could have made the trip.

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  • ygurin@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The closest thing in terms of a novel would be “Far Centaurus” by A. E. van Vogt

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  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If FTL is impossible (as may be the case) there is a point where a better ship can’t catch up, even if its going like 0.9c.

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  • JizzmasterD@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You guys think KFC is still open?

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