Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Tony <Tony@********.COM>
Subject: Space travel, and SR.
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 12:23:02 -0500
I've heard some opinions that suggest that space travel is impossible by
the physical laws of the universe. But I would not throw away the
possiblity of space travel away so quickly. In fact, there are many
things that science "proved" impossible in the past, and came to be.
The truth of the matter is that the world of Shadowrun is a world of
mystery. Human Beings in SR are just beginning to grasp the mysteries
of the universe, and forces unknown to Humans (or Meta-humans) have
virtually popped into exsistence. Magic by today's standards in science
,is an impossible "force", but in SR it exsists. So why not the ability
to travel the stars?
Today's Physics is not an explaination of all things... It is an attempt
to explain all things.

Tony@********.com
Message no. 2
From: Autumn / Shatterglass <laughingcrow@****.COM>
Subject: Re: Space travel, and SR.
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 10:39:49 PST
Tony...

I don't think deep space travel is impossible... Not at all... In fact, I
think that at some point in our existence it will become inevitable... An
outgrowth of the nature of our species.

We like to have frontiers, and the old Homeworld can only provide so many
of them before we're forced to look elsewhere. Even the re-emergence of
Magic in the Shadowrun world wouldn't alter that... The Metaplanes only
extend SO far, and have the limitation of being the dominion of the
magic users... For everybody else, Space is going to become the only
thing left... To quote Star Trek... "The Final Frontier".

Economic and technological excuses may slow down the curve, but they
won't halt it entirely... at least not for long, and lures like
profitable mining and the promise of other resources long-since scant on
Earth will eventually turn even reticent Corporate heads. The point is,
Meta/Human (and RL human, for that matter) expansion into the universe
WILL happen provided we don't destroy ourselves in the meantime. As for
the methods they'll employ... I think it's safe to say that some of
their inventions will be beyond anything we can come up with. DaVinci
dreamed of flight, but he never imagined an F-18.

That's what we're doing. We're looking at the sky and saying "What If-"
and "If Only"... Picturing possibilities in our minds... Imagining...
But we can't guess what the future will actually look like. We THINK it
can be done, but our descendants will go in their own time, and in their
own way. Some of our ideas may prove workable... But I'm betting that
most won't ever get off the drawing boards.

It is my personal opinion that when we DO go, at least some of the first
ones will go, and never be seen again. Time alteration will give them a
lifetime to travel nearly anywhere they choose... But back here, for the
ones that wait... They'll be gone for VAST lengths of time. Time enough
for technology to catch up to them perhaps, or time enough for cultures
to change and the travelers to be forgotten, or deified, or moved to the
status of mythology.... In their case, the data that they gather will be
personal. It will teach THEM, not the ones who stayed behind... And with
everything you knew and loved a thousand years in the past... There's not
a lot of reason to go home.

Another possibility is the creation of entirely self-contained
"Generation" ships. It might take these longer to reach their
destinations, and again... For those left behind it looks like a one-way
trip... But that's almost beside the point. It puts us THERE. The people
of the Earth become the people of the stars. A unique culture would
form in a few years on such a ship... I have to wonder what their
children, or their children's children, would think of Earth... A
homeworld they had never seen, and likely never WOULD see. I think that
THAT's when Humanity would really become citizens of the universe. When
we lost the idea that Earth was our best and only Home.

At any rate, space travel is far from impossible. It is simply more
distant a goal than some of us would like. And it involves questions and
possibilities we may not even have thought to ask yet...

Me? I still want that yachet with an ocean's worth of sail... That's MY
DaVinci's Aeroplane... But it may be a few centuries before anyone
actually gets one. That's fine. I still have Imagination in the
meantime. I suggest that for Shadowrun, we keep the orbitals, and the
high-flying aircraft... Put a small outpost on the moon... (I tend to
think of it as becoming in the next century what Antarctica is in this
one...) and leave everything else to the dreamers and the future-ists.


If your game projects another century into the future... Move the
out-posts to the Jovian moons and put miners on the asteroids and on
Mars... Move some industry to the moon... Pick a LeGrange Point and
inhabit it with a large station of some sort...

A century after that establish a cruise line for the Outer Worlds... Move
much beyond that and you are well within range of crossing the point of
singularity in more than technical invention. Don't forget that cultures
evolve as well, and there's no telling what the dynamics of any group may
look like after a few centuries of development in a new environment...

--Autumn

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Space travel, and SR., you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!