Re: The Warm Equations

On 6/25/2024 8:24 PM, Mad Hamish wrote:

On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 22:03:27 -0700, Robert Woodward
<robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:
 

In article <v5c8pc$n12$1@reader1.panix.com>,
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>

In article <v5c7ij$113u3$1@dont-email.me>,
Lynn McGuire  <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/23/2024 11:37 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Interesting to note the way margins of a real-life space venture are run:
>
Two astronauts have been stuck at the ISS for an extra two weeks,
so far, because their ride has flat tires, and it's not a crisis,
and nobody has had to volunteer to step out the airlock.

>
For those who do not know, this is a play on "The Cold Equations"
awesome incredibly sad short story:
    https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/
>

Alternatively, it's a terrible story about people with extremely
shitty pre-flight safety procedures.
>
https://reactormag.com/on-needless-cruelty-in-sf-tom-godwins-the-cold-equation
s/

>
Complacency can subvert excellently designed pre-flight safety
procedures. BTW, I came up with an interplanetary space drive
(non-Newtonian of course) that would be very mass sensitive (inspired by
the stutterwarp in GDW's roleplaying game _Traveller: 2300AD_, later
renamed _2300AD) and recalculations would be beyond the capability of
the shuttle's computer and sensor installation.

 Yes, but having a door that locks so that passengers can't just walk
into your shuttle seems like a fairly simple precaution without much
risk of problems from it

My immediate thought was "But it was written in the Golden Age when it was just assumed that only those with an IQ higher than a potato's would be allowed into space!"
Then reality drops a ton of potatoes on me.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.