The entire idea is a variant of a corollary of Moore’s Law. I recently read a passage that supposed you had a massive data project that would take years to complete. By some interpretations of Moore’s Law (the doubling of computing power every 18 months or so - which is still holding true, by the way), you are actually better waiting about half the current estimated time before beginning the project with vastly more powerful computers. If the current estimate is five years’ processing time, waiting two to three years means the project will actually finish faster.
Of course, that’s based on a limited and largely proven notion. Not sending generation ships because sometime in the next few decades someone might invent an FTL drive is… shortsighted.
Well you *can *Vogt, but you have to do so every 800 words, which is tiring.
In the new issue of Scientific American, a scientist makes the claim that fusion energy has proceeded at a rate equivalent to Moore’s Law. That was a passing comment in an interview and it didn’t get explained. He’s been working on fusion since 1966! He acknowledges that it seems to get farther into the future with every year but thinks we’ve made enough progress that we’re near a turning point and should keep up the funding. And before you say anything, he’s retiring so none of it will go to him.
In fact, they did it twice. The 70’s-era comic book “the Micronauts” uses that gimmick as part of the backstory for their main character, “Space-Glider”, IIRC.
Not really. Those examples are akin to “we randomly found some frozen people from the long-long-ago”, while my take was a Romulan splinter group who thought they could perfect themselves through genetic engineering and took off in nonwarp sleeper ships with the goal of their descendants one day returning to take command. By the time they woke up at their destination, the Romulans had FTL ships and was rapidly expanding, reducing the colony to a mere province. The response was to step up the pace of their genetic self-experimentation with mixed, mostly negative results.
Allen Steele’s “Coyote” series deals with not exactly the same but similar circumstances. A group of colonists lands on a planet, are there for a while. But then a ship that left much later arrives. I don’t remember the exact timeframes but say ten years and a hundred and you’d be close.
There was an oldie with that plot, where the FTL ships (arriving first) used “adelicnander,” or “electron psychology.” Was that the Van Vogt?
When I Google for that word, I get other discussion board messages, but no hard data.
The manga “2001 Nights” makes very lovely use of the motif.
The planet where the slow-boat is headed has a hostile environment. The poor colonists are doomed. Except the FTL civilization gets there first and terraforms the world for them.
It can also happen in Civilization II. You can launch your starship at a relatively low tech level… but launching doesn’t win the game; arriving does. So you’re better off waiting to launch until you have higher tech.
Slight nitpick: New Horizons made the flyby of the planet Pluto in a little over nine years, not 11.
Also, if Voyager 1 had been sent directly to the planet Pluto from Saturn, it would have also arrived–barring any incidents–in nine years.
