Re: [PLUG] "Nearby"

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

> On 3/3/17 10:34 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > Honestly, though, such a probe would probably arrive to find the
> > planet inhabited by humans who are celebrating "The First Probe Has
> > Arrived Day."  These humans might have left Earth 1000 years later
> > using technologies we can only speculate about, and they would have
> > decided to not touch the enroute probe just to see if it actually
> > makes it.  :)

There's an old short story sort of like this, I think from the 1940's, 
but I can't find it, and I forget the name and author, and most of the 
details.  What I remember is the press corp hanging around the control 
room waiting for the first images from the probe to come in from the 
remote planet.  The images are 80 or 100 years old due to light-speed, 
and yet one of the inhabitants of that world is actually there, in the 
control room.  I forget the exact punch-line but I think it was along 
the lines of they shot the probe down, then figure out what it was and 
where it came from and visited (peacefully?).


On 03/03/2017 01:05 PM, Fred Stluka wrote:
> Yeah, I think getting "lapped" by the technology of our own future
> generations is a real possibility.  Bummer for the crew that chose
> to travel in suspended animation to be the first to arrive, and when
> they wake up, they've already missed the party!


That happens in various SciFi stories, of course.

Not quite the same, but see Heinlein's _Time for the Stars_ (circa ). 
They go out with constant 1g acceleration via mass converters, take 
about 80 years to do this and that, then get picked up by a newer ship 
and get back to Earth "around lunch time."

Later,
JP
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JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/

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