Purgatory Mount - Adam Roberts

This post has 3 comments with rating of 5/53

• 
  alnilam
  June 9th, 2022
  

  The Forward, interstellar exploration craft. Here, present, correct: its crew of five. To assist these brave explorers, the ship has been equipped with a great quantity of advanced technology and an even larger quantity of supplies, dry store as well as livestock – animals from pygs and sheep all the way down to chickens, mice and microbes. The ship was shaped like a kilometre-long church spire, a comparison that dates from the period when churches were architecture with common cultural currency. But only pygs go to church these days. So say, rather: the ship was shaped like a gigantic bullet, crafted of ice many hundreds of metres thick – shield, fuel and a reservoir all at once. Inside this titanic sheath was a structure made of metallic plastic, eighty major compartments and many smaller spaces and corridors, ship’s supplies and life-support. The drive shaft extended fourteen hundred metres to the rear.

  Now the Forward was entering the system of V538 Aurigae. The eagles are coming! The eagles are here!

  The ship was shaped like a bullet to streamline it, because interstellar space is not a vacuum. It is, rather, an extremely attenuated gas: ions, atoms and molecules spread so thinly that one might encounter only a single atom in each cubic kilometre (or, of course, one might encounter areas considerably more dense with particles). At the speeds needful for interstellar travel, even flying into the path of one molecule releases significant energy, and flying for centuries at very high speeds is, in effect, to fly through an atmosphere. Moreover, at such speeds, evasive action is sluggish and limited, and however good one’s forward sensors, there is always the chance that your craft will encounter a damaging, perhaps even a catastrophic collision event on your travels. It all adds to the spice of the journey. But the Forward made it to V538 Aurigae without such disaster. Indeed, if one believed in Providence, one might find fortuity in the fact that our natal star, the Sun, happens to exist in what is called ‘the Local Bubble’, a relative cavity in the interstellar medium some 300 light-years in breadth and height, in which the density of space is markedly lower than the surroundings. The unusually sparse gaseous and molecular matter in this cavity is the result of a supernova explosion fifteen million years ago, the force of which cleared much of this space. This works to facilitate travel between stars in our local group. And so human beings pour into this space, flying in all directions, because, like Mallory with Everest, space in every direction is there. Dark, dark, dark – oh, we all go into the dark. It’s almost as if Providence wants humanity to spread out from its natal star! Eagles leaving the nest…

  Purgatory Mount - Adam Roberts
• 
  momada
  August 17th, 2022
  

  

  Thank you! I’m really looking forward to this :)

  Purgatory Mount - Adam Roberts
• 
  kirahmaria
  July 18th, 2023
  

  

  thank you!!

  Purgatory Mount - Adam Roberts

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