Good Reading!
Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon
Edited by James Benford and Gregory Benford
Starship Century is a ground‐breaking anthology of science and science fiction based on findings and discussions of the 100‐Year Starship Symposium held in 2011. The anthology includes non‐fiction and science fiction.
It contains fascinating facts and stories about travel to the stars. Turns out we can easily build starships that can travel to the stars in the next century. And it was facinating that the biggest problem to get humans to the stars is the ability to build a self sustaining eco-system. We’re not even close to that. We need to practice a lot on space stations, the Moon and Mars.
Just imagine that we don’t know about an essential fungus or bacteria that is a basis for all life. It’s everywhere and nothing goes wrong with it but after sometime on a starship bio life begins to deteriorate since the lack of the essence is only manifest after years of slow degradation.
Another fascinating essay in the book compares the wealth in the world to the cost of explorations throughout history. We are well on the way to a very wealthy world now believe it or not but it will take some time for the world wealth to reach the required amount to fund starship travel.
Read the book for the ideas and comments.
Check out their website too: Starship Century | Toward the Grandest Horizon
