Is it science or fiction?

Is it science or fiction?

There is so much futuristic science around, that anyone writing a scientific treatise would find it hard to avoid spilling into the realm of science fiction. Conversely, anyone writing a science fiction blog could very easily make it seem realistic, given the futuristic state of today's science. So this will be a science/science fiction blog.

For instance, Nathan Lowell has written a series about the days of the solar clipper. He makes no bones about comparing these stories to legends about sailing, even going so far as to begin his first novel in the series, Quarter Share, with the iconic "Call me Ishmael." That's the first name of his character throughout all the books in the series; Ishmael Horatio Wang.  His solar clippers are sailing craft that get their main motive power from solar  winds, until they are far enough out of the gravity well of their solar system to engage an FLT (Faster than Light) drive, whereupon they appear at the outskirts of another solar system, capture the solar wind of the new system and sail in to the orbital station of the new system. The time between solar systems is instantaneous, but it takes weeks or months to get to the point where an FTL drive can be engaged, and more months to get to the new system's orbital docking station.

Just how feasible is such a system? There are three aspects of it that warrant discussion; the orbital station, the solar wind, and an FTL drive. 

First is the orbital station: how feasible is it? Assuming this is several hundred years in the future, an orbital station would be reasonable. The major difficulty would be our ability to ferry material that can be used to build such a station into an orbit about the planet. Lifting all the material off the planet itself is probably not the answer, but there is a lot of material floating around out there that could be used to build such a station.

NASA rendering of a possible lunar colony building created by a 3D printer using lunar particulate.

Mining asteroids for metal, processing it in orbit, and fabricating such a station using 3-D printers and the like, while pretty futuristic, is not so far-fetched as to stagger the imagination. We have the printing capability, and NASA is already developing materials and approaches that can augment resources at hand, such as moon particulate, to build spare parts for a lunar colony as the above NASA rendering illustrates.

Second is the solar wind itself. We are very fortunate in our solar system because the solar wind of our sun is a significant potential source for both motive and broadcastable power. A space ship could use an electronic antenna array to capture this power and build up tremendous velocity on the way out of the gravity well of our solar system. NASA has developed contingency plans to power flights to Mars and beyond using solar wind to shorten such a journey to no more than a few months. They are even on the brink of using such power in small craft operating in and around a space station. The following ESA/NASA photo shows the solar wind via a fly-by from one of our voyager satellites.

ESA/ NASA photo of solar winds taken by a Voyager 

Third is the concept of an interstellar FTL drive. The science fiction jury is still out on this one. Many novels just use standard ballistic acceleration to get a space ship to near light speed, taking many years to travel between stars. One example is 2001--A Space Odyssey. To while away the time, travelers must be put into some sort of stasis for the duration. There are also difficulties with time compression/dilation here, causing problems for space-faring folk. They have to differentiate between subjective time and time as experienced by those on their home planets. Other science fiction novels posit a wrinkle in the space-time continuum that allows you to jump from one locale to another. One FTL drive would be able to create such a wrinkle and thereby create a door between one system and another. This would require astrogation and a lot of energy. It's what is used in Lowell's books. For a look at other science fiction approaches to this problem, check the FTL link above.

This is a simple examination of a very complicated possibility. We have the technology to build an orbital station. Indeed we already have such a station, though it is not as large or sophisticated as those depicted by Lowell. We have the ability to use solar winds, at least in theory. FTL travel is awaiting discovery, but it may not be as far away as we think. It wouldn't take much of a leap to imagine a practical application of all this technology. Interstellar travel awaits. A good thing, too, because if Elon Musk, the father of Space X company,  is right, we need to get off this mud ball for survival of our species.