If starships are ever built, it will be in the far future. But that does not deter the intrepid band of scientists who are thinking about how to do it
SPACE, as Douglas Adams pointed out in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, is big. Really big. It is so big, in fact, that even science fiction struggles to make sense of it. Most sci-fi waves away the problem of the colossal distances between stars by appealing to magic, in the form of some kind of faster-than-light hyperdrive, hoping readers will forgive the nonsense in favour of enjoying a good story.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Starship troupers”
From the October 26th 2013 edition
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