Re: Interstellar Propulsion idea using an Asteroid and a few comets!

From: AA Institute (abdul.ahad_at_ntlworld.com)
Date: 08/17/04 

Date: 17 Aug 2004 09:07:11 -0700

"Androcles" <androc1es@nospamblueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:<XSGTc.507$2M7.7535797@news-text.cableinet.net>...
> "AA Institute" <abdul.ahad@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:adbf5bc1.0408141517.387adbe8@posting.google.com...
> | > Your optimism is founed upon ignorance.
> |
> | That's a matter of opinion and based on how flexible people want to be
> | about the realm of possibilities. I like to think that my concept is
> | not based on *complete* sci-fi, unlke many other ideas floating around
> | out there inside people's heads.
>
>
> Sci-fi, or science fiction, is to write about a possible future in which
> some imaginary technological development has taken place and the social
> implications that follow. Yours is not complete sci-fi, you've left out the
> impact on society. How are we to classify the idea floating around in your
> head from the idea floating around inside any renowned science-fiction
> author's head? Whatever you like to think, your idea is to pursuade the
> human race or some political segment thereof to expend a vast amount of its
> resources in capturing an *asteroid*, for heaven's sakes, kitting it out as
> a massive spacecraft and going to some unknown destination that just happens
> to be nearby, astronomically speaking, gathering fuel that you suspect
<snip>

Lighten up... we aren't about to fly to the stars! There's the new
vision of space set out by George W. Bush, the so-called "Moon to
Mars" initiative which is currently forcing NASA to restructure itself
by way of re-alignment to facilitate that vision. Hopefully by 2020,
if we're lucky we will see astronauts doing some joy riding on the
Moon! I dream of that day (my generation was too young to remember
even the very last mission - Apollo 17 - on the Moon).

> Finish the book if you want to, and if it has a human
> interest angle with heros, heroines, villains and danger it may even get
> made into a movie, but it is every bit as much sci-fi as anything I've ever
> heard of.

Writing a sci-fi novel around a trip to Alpha Centauri in a generation
starship sounds an excellent idea and I have imagined some of it
already. If anyone beats me to it, please can you remember to add some
supernatural horror, as I'm into all that spine chilling stuff. A sort
of "Arthur C. Clarke meets Stephen King" would be ideal...

Interstellar cosmic darkness shrouding a lonely colony of generation
starship occupants is a perfect setting for such a novel. Where
creatures of pure energy roam between solar systems... interacting
with the minds of starship dwellers... <snip> (I don't want to give
the story away!!!)
>
>
>
> | > Not that I am aware of. I would doubt it, considering there is no
> | > reason to believe there is enough stuff out there to use that is
> | > larger than a hydrogen atom.
> | >
> | Good! Then my idea is a first "comet sucking", Ahad AsterCom starship
> | design. The countdown has already started...its ticking away silently
> | toward some as yet un-determined launch date which *may* come to
> | fruition one day...not that I'd be there to see it of course!

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