I expect that most of us are familiar with this classic hard-sf story by Tom Godwin. But just in case we have any virgins among us, I’ll link to the story.
To summarize: the story is set in a future in which humanity has begun to colonize other planets; there is hyperlight travel, but it is very expensive and restricted only to the largest ships, which maintain very tight schedules. When a colony needs unexpected and critical help, the nearest cruiser will come just close enough to launch a smaller vessel called an emergency dispatch ship; because fuel is so precious, EDSes are given only enough to convey their pilot and his cargo to their destination. (The masculine pronoun is intentional; it’s an old story, and it’s pretty clear that only men do jobs like this.) The protagonist is an EDS pilot who discovers a stowaway on his ship – but only after he’s unaway. The stowaway is a young girl, recently graduated from high school, who wanted to join her beloved older brother on the colony to which the EDS is heading. Foolish and ignorant, she did not realize that her presence on the ship would be her doom, for her unaccounted-for mass will cause the EDS to crash on approach. The law requires that she be spaced, which the pilot does: not without regret and mercy, for he delays as long as he can so she can write a good-bye letter to her parents and speak to her brother one last time.
As many people have noted, the central dilemma in “The Cold Equations” is a matter of correct physics, but bad engineering and management. Something as simple as a proper pre-flight checklist would have saved the young girl from her death, and I’m sure our engineers will think of several other ways she might have been saved had the system been different. But though I cannot argue that, I still find the story gripping and moving, despite the error in its premise.
I really tried to enjoy the story… but I know that every vehicle is designed with redundancies and margins of error; if Apollo 13 was flexible enough to survive and land with a damaged fuel tank and loss of air, it goes without saying that a spacecraft centuries more advanced would be even more so. It’s not even good engineering - it’s basic engineering. You design your device to function in a potential worse-case scenario, not just a routine scenario.
Generally, I’m capable of overcoming these sort of logical inconsistencies in stories - but not when they go against everything we know of human nature. That’s the problem when stories are written by scientists rather than by engineers; scientists think in absolute terms, engineers in functional.
Redundancies and backups are what we are used to. But if you get your technology a bit better/more reliable, and you aren’t TOO worried about death due to failure, backups are just a waste/luxury. And if things are really hard to do energy/mass wise, it may be a choice of doing it without backups or not doing at all.
You make things overly complicated so that when things go south you still have a chance. At the other end of the spectrum you can keep things as simple as you can and do your best to do everything right. Which one is safer depends on many things. But I know which one I’d bet was lighter.
I guess you just despise “The Martian Chronicles” then. Awful science, good story.
I have two responses. First, if you’ve read as many sf stories of that vintage as I have, a common theme is how the slightest misstep will kill you. In an era when they thought we’d be bring slide rules into space (remember Slipstick Libby?) So having no margin for error was a bad prediction, but a fairly common one.
Second, this shows that ASF was not equations in text form. I bet that Campbell knew the holes (which are the environment, not in the actions) and went with it anyway because the point of the story was not how the engineering could have been better.
Yes we have massive redundancy. Burt Rutan thinks that one reason we are so slow in space exploration is that we are so cautious that our casualty rate is a lot lower than that for early flight.
The idea of redundancy and our notions of safety were not how people thought in the 1940s. The set-up was perfectly reasonable – why waste the extra fuel if you didn’t need it?
It didn’t bother me, for three reasons. First, because I never noticed until it was pointed out many years alter. Second, just because something is bad engineering doesn’t mean it won’t be done anyway; I can certainly see some bean-counter type insisting that no safety margin be used to “save money:”; like Chernobyl being built without a containment dome. And third, because it misses the real point of the story; namely that the laws of physics are inexorable and don’t care about morality or compassion or if it was “just a mistake”. An important point given how often people seem to think that they can make the universe work they want it to just by insisting that it must.
As a side point, I recall another story published by another author many years later called The Cold Solution. It was the same scenario, except in this one the pilot solved the problem with a laser welding tool; she cut off her stowaway’s legs, then her own legs (it cauterized, so they didn’t bleed to death), ejected their legs and therefore lowered the mass of the ship. Both survived.
Apollo 13 only survived because they were carrying a second spaceship with them. And they weren’t carrying that second ship for redundancy/safety either.
I agree with Der Trihs - “the real point of the story; namely that the laws of physics are inexorable and don’t care about morality or compassion or if it was “just a mistake”. An important point given how often people seem to think that they can make the universe work they want it to just by insisting that it must.”
I think I was about 12 when I first read this story, and I was very disturbed by the poor engineering. Not just that there was no built in safety margin, but that the story makes it clear that there were plenty of other things which could be thrown out to lighten the ship:
I could never visualize how there wasn’t 110 pounds of stuff. She’s sitting on some kind of machine casing. For crying out loud, the computer sounds like a huge machine which includes features such as a printer built in. Throw out the damn printer.
In 1954 (or the future envisioned from someone in 1954) the printer is likely the only output device the computer has.
But I agree with your larger point. I can believe in a future where engineers are secure enough that they don’t build in any redundancy. I can’t really believe that they didn’t think to toss the furniture out of the airlock instead of the stowaway.
Didn’t bother me at the time. I was about 12 and when she comes to terms with the fact that she’s already dead, and she can go alone or she can take the colony with her it was one of the pieces in coming to terms with my own mortality. Plus I agree with Der Trihs, it’s about the cold equations, and the price of building a soft safe society that doesn’t prepare you for the hard edge of the frontier, combat, space, etc.
I haven’t read this story, but I lost all respect for Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy when in the first book, the idea was advanced that the first major Martian colony vessel, carrying a well-trained elite of 100 carefully-chosen colonists, had had a stowaway. This struck me as so absurdly improbable that though I managed to force-plow my way through that book, I didn’t bother with the sequels.
I agree. Not only in the sense Der Trihs said but also in a genre sense. A lot of SF stories throw in some heroic solution (like the quasi-sequel Der Trish mentioned) where the hero is able to overcome some insurmountable obstacle through genius, will, and the power of clean living. Godwin was making the point that real life doesn’t work like fiction - sometimes a good guy’s best efforts aren’t enough.
If we had seen him try half a dozen possible solutions to the problem, and fail, it would have made the exact same point while still maintaining credibility.
That was the point. Realistically there was nothing he could do.
But in a lot of SF stories he would have invented some new hyperwarp technology and built a prototype starship engine out of spare parts that happened to be available.
It doesn’t bother me – as others noted above, the whole point of the story, encapsulated in the title, is that the physics is inexhorable, given the situation, and doesn’t care about people. I note, by the way, that in the most recent of several adaptations the astronaut does try other solutions before they realize that the physics of the situation leaves no way out.
Interestingly, the story isn’t original with Godwin. From Wikipedia:
Even Wikipedia misses the earliest case of this story, though. Robert Cromie’s A Plunge into Space features exactly the same situation (girl stows away on space ship, throws off the trajectory/ballistics, has to be ejected) in 1890, a quarter of a century before Tom Godwin was even born.
(It also has astronauts flying to Mars in a sphere fitted with anti-gravity plates over a decade before H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon.)
I don’t think it’s been pointed out already, but the plot hole in the story that bugged me once I noticed it is this - if the ship contains exactly enough fuel and no more for it to take off, accelerate to maximum velocity, then decelerate and land, then the ship is already doomed by the time the captain discovers his stowaway, since they’ve used more fuel than they should have getting up to speed.
Wasn’t so improbable, as I recall. The stow-away had confederates on the crew, one of which was in charge of the farming section of the ship and thus could hide him there and provide him with food, etc.
I read the story and Godwin lost me by the EDS even requiring a pilot. By 1954, there were already guided missiles and unmanned drone aircraft. It didn’t make sense to me that tech high enough to have interstellar spaceflight actually required the equivalent of a “fighter jock” to steer and land an EDS. The story falls squarely into “clear-eyed realist porn.” This genre is much beloved by Randroids, Libertarians, and others who see themselves as clear-eyed, competent realists in a world full of fuzzy-headed wishful thinkers.
Second, just because something is bad engineering doesn’t mean it won’t be done anyway; I can certainly see some bean-counter type insisting that no safety margin be used to “save money:”; like Chernobyl being built without a containment dome. And third, because it misses the real point of the story; namely that the laws of physics are inexorable and don’t care about morality or compassion or if it was “just a mistake”. An important point given how often people seem to think that they can make the universe work they want it to just by insisting that it must.