h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rondezvous with Rama will tell you a lot,also check out Robert Hienline,The stars are ours.Avaliable only if you are lucky,and determined.

January 20, 2001

I am doing a very experimental feature film about Jackson Pollock.
What are your thoughts about relating his art to the deep cosmos?

Do you see the possibily of aspects of his art representing an artist's way of recording an unconscious impression of the macro universe?

And dear researcher 165848 and others, are there any solutions implied here to deep space travel either in fun or serious possibility?

researcher A53146
[email protected]

Rabinart, I'm unfamiliar with Jackson Pollock, yet the idea of individuals being sensitive to siganls either generated by 'the cosmos' or 'in tune with the cosoms' is familiar...at least in fiction (check out John Varley's short story "The Tin Pan Alley Cats"). Whether there's any truth to this is like asking if there's anything to astrology: it's no more provable to me than you. Maybe Pollock has something and maybe not.

As for solutions posed by A.C.C. or Heinlein.....A.C.C. is a scientist and has a more rational mind than most of us. He can create many theories about space travel, but since going beyond the Moon in a can isn't going to happen in the short future, all of his ideas remain theory. Remember, too, that he postulated communications-satellites in a geosynchronous orbit (one that allows the satellite to remain over a fixed-spot on Earth) in 1946 and this was finally put to the test in the...damn, I've forgotten. Either late fifties or early sixties. Anyway, you got the point.
Heinlein was far better at dealing with realities in a fictional situation (if that makes any sense). Given the conditions his characters were in, they all responded sensibly, reasonably and believably: maturely.

There are a great deal of offerings for space habitats, both mobile (travelling to other planets) or stationary (in orbit). All of those depend on the materials for the technology, the technology itself, the finances to make it happen and the need for it in the first place.

I think we should just keep going, aware of the limits and the possibilities. Solutions will come from the strangest places: today's newborn may be the next Hawking and rewrite everything. Tomorrow's infant may find just the right chemical balance and provide the final word in construction materials. With all the information floating about today, the 70 year old retired engineer may connect a physics problem with the materials available and solve the faster-than-light drive situation.
There's no way to know. What there is is going with what's available and trusting that very bright people are working, around the world, to solve these problems for the benefit of the mission. Give them the room to do that.

Fruitbat

It is Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein... Joe Haldeman is also good