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From: eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Improving Starships Enroute
Message-ID: <349@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Nov-85 15:08:11 EST
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.349
Posted: Fri Nov  8 15:08:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 06:20:56 EST
References: <1144@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Co., Seattle, WA
Lines: 23

> ... However, travel to any star system at nonrelativistic speeds will
> take a LONG TIME and require some clever mechanism to support humans for the
> trip duration. However, if those humans do not intend to return, then they can
> travel at nearly the speed of light and into the future at the same time. They
> are gambling that technology won't find a better way to do this in the time
> that slipped by. These people might find much more advanced humans already at
> their destination when they get there.
> 
> Steve DiPirro
> Digital Equipment Corp.
> 
     That may not be the bugaboo it is thought to be.  If an expedition
starts out with a well equipped starship, with a varied assortment of raw
materials (which you would do anyway if you were colonizing), and stays in
touch with home via radio/laser, as new technologies are developed they
could be incorporated into the ship's design.

     You would need something like a fair sized asteroid plus a complete
manufacturing complex and a skilled crew, well suited to the generation
ship type of interstellar travel.  Really unusual materials might even
be delivered to the expedition by way of small, fast courier.

Dani Eder/ Advanced Space Transportation/ Boeing