by Strong, Ray
In Memorium: Remarks on the Anniversary of the Destruction of Brazil
[Introduction deleted.]
Throughout history, humans have lived on the edge of extinction, on the razor’s edge between starvation and annihilation at the whim of the unforgiving hand of nature and subject to the universe’s existential lack of concern. We humans challenged the strong hand of nature that once constrained our species, and we won. But we risk destruction by our own hand through overpopulation. In the last hundred years, the strong hand of man acting through the United Nations of Earth has intervened to stop humanity’s destruction of itself and our planet. As human beings who care for all Earth’s creatures, this strong hand was necessary; we could do nothing else. We conquered the threats from Gaia and in so doing became her protector.
The sacrifice of personal liberty, the limitations of technological innovation, the strict regulation of how and where we live were all necessary to achieve this victory over ourselves, necessary and painful but for the common good.
But every act of good has unforeseen consequences. As we found when Asteroid G-44 destroyed Brazil and the coastlines of the Atlantic, our one home on Earth leaves our species vulnerable to even more severe threats from nature. To meet those threats, humans have seeded the stars.
Outposts of humanity cling to life in the stars, but only human life. Even the richest habitats cannot support self-sustaining ecosystems with diverse species. And our human experiment is still young. It is still not clear whether these outposts can survive without roots planted firmly in the soil of Earth, the single planet that supports human life. I implore us to change that.
Earth is our home, but our future is out there. We must expand the quantity and diversity of Earth life on the colonies and stations to protect it from the whims of nature. We must affix anchors on other worlds and build ecosystems around them that will support Earth life. We must make the stars our home. Humanity must rise to that challenge or suffer annihilation.
Join me, and let us populate the stars!
Glossary for Earthers
The authors have done their best to use vocabulary common to Earthers in the event that unredacted editions of this work will be smuggled past the UNE censors. However, some distinctions common to merchant spacers may be unfamiliar and we thus offer this brief glossary.
Arcology
A very densely populated structure or hyperstructure. Popularized by twentieth-century visionary Paolo Soleri, who coined the term.
AU
Astronomical Unit. One AU is the distance from the Earth to Sol, or about 149-million kilometers. The speed of light is about 0.3 million kilometers per second, so it takes an electromagnetic (EM) signal about eight minutes to travel one AU. That’s a huge distance!
Communications beacon
Physicists have not figured out how to send radio and other electromagnetic (EM) signals faster than the speed of light (FTL), so FTL ships consistently outrun their messages. Since information is often more valuable than mass, ships carry messages and news-storage systems that synchronize with beacons near stations. Ships resynch on-board memory with these beacons every time they leave a station, and enter a new system. Each ship that downloads to a beacon receives some revenue.
Cruiser
Mark IX Cила Грузчик, or Power Loader designed on a Russian colony near Bernard’s Star. They are nicknamed “Cruisers” because in English, the name sounds like “silly cruischick.” Cargo handlers sometimes refer to themselves as Cruisers, but the term is considered an insult if used by anyone else, especially when referring to a woman.
EM
Electromagnetic waves, like radio, TV, light, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and X-rays, which travel at the speed of light.
EMP
Electromagnetic pulse. A strong EM wave that essentially zaps all nearby electronics.
ET
Earth Time. A useful baseline for coordination in time. Loosely based on Earth Standard Time and the convenient assumption that there is one single time for everything in the universe, which is useful in all astrophysical calculations and has nothing whatsoever to do with the timekeeping devices on each ship or mass. An exact correlation is very difficult over light-years because everything of interest moves at fractions of the speed of light. Navigation computers only have a useful approximation.
Floor and deck
Floor typically refers to the horizontal platform under your feet on a colony, moon, or planet with a stable gravity. Deck refers to the similar structure of a vessel. However, stationers think of their stations as stable and permanent and use floor. Spacers often refer to the deck on a station, which identifies them to stationers.
Grange
Voluntary organization of Earth farmers first organized in the United States in the nineteenth century. Earth agriculture became socialized by 2040 under UN regulations and land productivity has declined ever since.
Gravity well
A large mass that distorts space-time like a bowling ball on a trampoline.
ISA
Interstellar Sports Association.
Laws of Navigation
In common language these can be stated as (1) all positions are relative (there are no fixed reference points, only conventions); (2) everything is moving all the time; and (3) you can only know for sure where things were, not where they are. (0) Law 0 was included later to keep the math honest. Law 0: the arrow of time is unidirectional.
Light curtain
Archaic technology from early twenty-first century where an array of low-power lasers separated adjoining rooms with a translucent curtain of light. It replaced the modestly priced hanging beads found more commonly in environments with steady gravity. Light curtains were also less likely to become a choking hazard if gravity shifted or was lost.
Mess hall or mess
On ships, the kitchen is called the galley, and the dining area is called the mess.
Nav-4
Navigator, rating-4. This designation refers to the skill level of a navigator as assessed by an independent agency. In this case, John’s post is chief warrant officer of navigation. A nav-5 rating would qualify him to be posted to pilot and senior navigator for the Tiger, but Jerri currently held that post. The post is different from rank, such as captain, commander, pilot, chief warrant officer, petty officer, or seaman. Rank and post are also different from skill level.
OOD
Officer On Deck. The OOD is the ship’s officer in charge of the bridge during a shift and serves as the direct representative of the captain
Sphere of uncertainty
Sometimes just known as sphere. When you jump, there is uncertainty in time and space about where you will end up due to your lack of certainty of the positions and masses of everything along your path. This uncertainty is shown by drawing a sphere around a calculated destination. The second law of nav says, “Everything is moving all the time,” so it is difficult to calculate precisely where you will end up, unless you know every mass and where it’s all going. That’s impossible to do without infinite compute resources. So there is always an uncertainty of where you’ll end up, and that uncertainty can be shown as a sphere. It’s actually more like a sphere with a hollow center because there is absolutely no chance that you will hit what you aimed at. The sphere grows exponentially with distance, so shorter jumps have smaller spheres.
Suit
Warm-suit—emergency gear for an air leak. Warm-suits have a carbon mesh and an inflatable clear hood to allow the wearer to survive in a vacuum for a few hours. It has a built-in rebreather and temperature control. It will not last more than a few hours in a hard vacuum and is no protection against weapons.
Ten stages of a spacers’ party
(1) uncomfortably shy and distant; (2) polite or coy; (3) friendly and engaging conversation; (4) double entendre, puns, and sexual innuendo; (5) loud and bawdy; (6) out of control, partial undress, drinking with your worst enemy; (7) looking for trouble; (8) finding tr
ouble, confrontation/altercation; for large parties, rioting; (9) nursing wounds; and (10) Soberall(TM), sleep, or rehab.
Tranq boost
Tranquilizers, called “tranq,” are needed to overcome the long periods of disorientation during jumps. Tranq-boost is a stronger tranq that suppresses the imagination and memories, which can overwhelm during jumps.
UNE
United Nations of Earth. Intergovernmental organization of 804 nations, states, planets, colonies, and moons within the Sol star system dominated by planet Earth.
Wink-in
When an FTL object comes into your view, you have no sense of it before it physically arrives because it’s moving faster than the photons or EM radiation that would tell you that it’s coming. When the FTL object arrives, it appears along with its EM, and it looks like a weak flash or a wink.
XO
Executive officer or first officer. This officer is next in command to the captain.
***
(end Home: Interstellar)
About the Author
Ray Strong went to college to learn how to design space ships and has spent his career in a variety of high-tech industries. He is a lifetime professional engineer and writer with roots in those stuffy top-five universities.
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