It was a while ago, but my memory is that he was pretty little.
I’ve seen similar questions posed as the solution to the trolley problem. What sort of messed up city do you live in where not only are people getting tied to the tracks, but they also build trolleys without brakes?
I get that it’s one thing if it’s a thought experiment (who cares how we got here, that’s not the point), but quit another when it’s a story. A story needs reasons that things happen, and situations exist. When real life accidents are fully explained, there is coherent narrative of the series of mistakes, oversights, failures, and unforeseen problems that led up to it.
Most of these dilemmas are in short stories written just for the purpose of presenting the dilemma, I think. There’s usually not a lot of context?
There are a million stories where people get into trouble in stupid and boring ways, and very few where the characters end up in a situation where the laws of physics dictate the events that play out. That’s why we’re talking about The Cold Equations 70+ years later and not 99.99% of all the other short stories that have ever been written.
The story would not actually have been improved if it obsessively detailed every security failure on the ship that led to the situation. We don’t have to be told about the incompetent bureaucratic committee on Earth that wrote the legal standards for the signage on the ship, toning down the “you will die” aspects in favor of legalese because they thought it would scare the passengers. Or the contractor that manufactured the door locks that fail to latch 2/3 of the time. You can imagine these things. It’s called The Cold Equations, not The Myriad Failures of the Colonial Administrative State.
But then how would you possibly stretch it out into a 7 hour movie trilogy filmed on location in New Zealand? (Part I: Bureaucrats and Pencil Pushers, Part II: A Mission to Gerry, Part III: Marylin and the Wrongful Death Lawsuit)
I thought that was the point of this thread, when the story leaves out exposition that might not directly matter, but would explain why the simple and obvious solution doesn’t work. Any easy answer to a fictional dilemma can be ruled out by aspects of the story that aren’t mentioned. “The eagles winter south of Harad, so weren’t available as air taxis until late in the War of the Ring.”
The point of the story- after Campbell got done sending it back over and over- was to generate a lot of fan letters, ire and attention. Which is has done. In hell, John will be smiling a bit.
Good point.
They don’t.
There wouldnt have been a story. Campbell wanted a story that would get his readers attention.
Ok, yes, I suppose I did forget the point. The gruff security watchman sees the girl, glares at her, and taps the sign that says “Stowaways will be put to death.” The girl sheepishly walks back to her cabin. The End.
It has been shown that you can get pretty close to Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) without him definitely knowing you are there.
Snipe him?
There’s a disconnect between the setup of the story and the plight of our innocent girl: namely that first, interstellar travel is conducted on a crisis level: SO restricted and SO vital that starships have to let people die rather than let even more people die by breaking schedule; and at most there’s an emergency expendable one-way pod capacity for dealing with exigencies that might pop up. At the same time you have passengers on that interstellar transport who behave as though they’re taking a trolley ride, when actually the comparable situation might be evacuees aboard a US or HMS Navy ship in the Pacific Theater of WW2.
If things are that effing desperate why aren’t the passengers read the riot act, or better still locked in their cabins or steerage holds for the duration?
No, no, a prequel about the watchman that goes into detail about how he washed out of spaceship pilot school, turned to alcohol, got his life back together for a few years, until his partner was diagnosed with terminal space measles, and due to the stress he started drinking again. All to explain why he was asleep and let the girl slip by.
We gotta stuff a barrel ride down some river rapids in there somewhere.
And why he left the multiple locks open, and was sleeping in front on the warning sign, and why the pilot was distracted and didnt do a pre-flight check.
And why that company was then sued/fined out of existence. 
Yeah, that part is all covered in the court room drama third part of the trilogy. The ending is unsatisfactory, though, because the two sides come to a surprise settlement just as the jury is coming back after deliberations, so we never find out how they decided. It was going to be revealed in a direct to streaming movie that focused on one of the jurors (an asteroid miner who fought space pirates), but that was canceled. Supposedly there will be a comic book tie in, but no writers or artists are on board yet.
Anyway, when there is an apparently obvious solution to the main conflict in the story, just a line or two of dialogue can often put that solution to rest. A talented writer should be able to integrate it in a way that is not clunky or seems like reader service exposition. “Fucking company cost cutting, we don’t carry nukes into orbit anymore.”
There’s the “dark” version where the ship had more than enough fuel and the pilot is a psychopath. All his transmissions were lies.
The “real life story” is pretty clearly urban legendish. The teller obviously never met anyone involved in the story, so it’s already n-th hand. 40-50 people?!? And a single baby is going to scuttle things? Not buying that scenario at all. I don’t think you can hide 40-50 people, sorry.
Now the MASH version was already completely made up by involving Army personnel. Speaking of which, how the hell is an Army unit on a day leave blundering into an area where there are going to be patrols?!? We’re going on a day trip, whoops we’re picking up wounded, whoops we’re picking up random locals with babies in tow, whoops there is some sort of MP on the bus too but not actual combat troops on our side anywhere in sight on this three hour tour. Complete and utter bullshit.
Very Minor Spoiler- The New Battlestar Galactica
Baltar is the second highest government official in charge of what remains of humanity. He keeps having hallucinations of a beautiful woman who has sex with him and tells him all kinds of useful information. Understandably concerned that he is losing his grip on reality, Baltar insists on a bunch of medical tests without telling anybody why. The woman appears to him during the tests. The medical technician tells him to stop talkig to himself or moving. The tests find nothing wrong. Baltar keeps nervouly asking more questions about the results.
I was really wondering why medical personel would not break confidentiality to inform the President that Vice President Baltar seems to be going crazy. This was a big fictional dilemma. They resolved it perfectly. Baltar finally leaves the medical office. The technician appears frustrated and disgusted and says to himself
“Frakkin’ hypochindriacs! There’s one on every ship.”
I actually wondered, right before the final book came out, what Voldemort’s attitude would be toward guns (not that I thought there was any chance that Rowling would end the series in that way).
Would he, as a proper supervillain, be completely prepared for and protected against bullets fired from a distance? Or would he arrogantly assume that Muggles, being so far beneath him, could never possibly develop a weapon that might be a threat to him?
Well, one fantasy wizard did this-
Snape could snipe the snake in a snap.
(But he’d keep coming back as long as he still had horcruxes.)
Naturally, I found a comic strip explaining the eagle thing: Ornithology