This funny Roswell Business
Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Fri, 11 Jul 97 10:01:51 CST
Roswell and the UFO phenomenon may be the government taking advantage
of first cold war, now millenial hysteria and keeping a nice
entertaining dog and pony show going to keep the masses distracted.
There is a tinge of paranoia in that statement I suppose but I figure
when you have access to the mightiest military force on the planet and
gazillions of dollars, you might just get a little power hungry and
outta control.
But I'm much more fascinated by the notion that spacecraft (flying
saucers,etc..) would be impractical for interstellar travel, given the
inviobility of FTL travel. Not knowing enough to go on about the
physics involved, my question is more a request for illumination.
What about the notion of interdimensional travel where space is
"folded" as in Dune or notions (however unfounded) like the wormhold
in DS9? Perhaps there are means of sustaining matter as one traverses
physical dimensions into ones where distance isn't an issue.
Now, I don't really need to know whether or not there are creatures,
races from other planets. Chances are pretty high since it's a pretty
big place that's been around several billions years. But then again,
the world was a pretty big place to people who could only travel as
fast as a horse could gallop (if they had horses) or boats that were
essentially hollowed-out logs. The first Spanish ships must've looked
like some alien mothership to the indigenous natives of the western
hemisphere. Distance and vastness are relative to our ability to
traverse the space. What took generations, months and thousands of
lives in the traversing of USAmerica now is done in a matter of hours
and then we get pissy if the flights are off schedule. Just 150 years
or so ago, pissy had a different context. And now, change is on an
exponential curve that makes 19th to 20th century innovation pale
comparison. We're in for some interesting times.
Rick