For centuries, writers have imagined people traveling to the Moon. In 1638, Francis Godwin published The Man in the Moon, a story about a man whose trained geese go out of control and fly him to the Moon. By the 1800s, however, the Industrial Revolution was underway, and people saw how machines were changing the world. Writers imagined more and more just how our lives might change in years to come.
For example, a French science fiction writer, Jules Verne, wrote of a spaceship shot to the Moon by a cannon--from Florida. This picture from the movie A Trip to the Moon, based on Verne's story, shows the giant cannon firing. The result: the bulletlike spaceship is plunged right into the eye of our nearest neighbor. A Trip to the Moon, made in 1902, was the first science fiction movie.
In 1926, Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction, appeared. From then on, more and more writers described space travel. They generally used rockets, the one method we have discovered that really works. They traveled not only to the Moon, the planets, and their satellites in their stories, but also to other stars.
We can now see where science fiction writers guessed wrong. Most described rocket ships zipping across the solar system as though they were airplanes going from New York to Los Angeles. Actually, it takes rockets months to travel to Mars, and years to reach the distant outer planets. If rockets kept their engines firing, they could go a little faster. But in real life, rockets simply can't carry enough fuel to do that for long.
In many science fiction stories, people on spaceships were pictured as leading normal lives, just as if they were on ocean liners. The writers knew that spaceships coasting through space would experience zero gravity, or weightlessness, but most just assumed that there would be some sort of artificial gravity.
In reality, so far at least, astronauts on real spaceships have had to live with weightlessness and cramped living conditions. Naturally, science fiction writers want their stories to be exciting. But making a story more exciting doesn't always make it more accurate.
Jules Verne described a trip to the Moon, but didn't have his heroes land. That wasn't exciting enough. In H.G. Wells's 1901 story, The First Men in the Moon, the heroes not only land on the Moon, but encounter an advanced civilization. This scene is from the 1964 movie version of Wells's story. But the Moon in fact has not been like the Moon in fiction. When human beings actually did land on the Moon in 1969, they found no civilization.
The Moon was a completely dead world. When the landing was made, however, hundreds of millions of people on Earth watched it on television. That was one achievement the early science fiction writers hadn't thought of-watching a Moon landing on television.
Early science fiction writers assumed that all the planets of our solar system were pretty much Earth-like. There would be grain fields on Mars, irrigated by water from the canals. Settlers on Venus would hunt dinosaurs. And as scientists learned that planetary atmospheres were not breathable, writers invented domed or underground cities with special atmospheres.
If, in the future, we do want to explore or settle other parts of the solar system, we may have to do something like this. In order to live in space, we will have to work in space. And to do that we will first have to build a space station close to Earth. It would be a place where people could permanently live, work, and put together new spaceships for exploration farther out in space. Soviet rocket scientist and space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about space stations in a 1920 science fiction story.
Since the 1950s, scientists have designed space stations as great spinning wheels. The spin would produce effects resembling gravity. Space stations haven't been built yet, but when they are, they will probably be smaller and simpler than those that have been imagined.
In order to make their stories more exciting, science fiction writers often imagine different forms of life on various planets. Usually, the writers include advanced, intelligent life forms that might often be hostile to humans.
In reality, we have no actual evidence--at least not yet--that any life exists beyond Earth. But still we dream of seeking and finding advanced life forms among the stars. The idea of star travel is appealing, but it's not very realistic. For instance, if there were a Galactic Empire or Federation, how would its members communicate?
And how would people travel from one star to the next? Ever since 1905, scientists have known that nothing we know of can possibly go faster than the speed of light, which travels at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) a second.
Science fiction writers are forced to break the laws of nature and imagine something like "hyperspace," through which spaceships can go faster than light-like taking a shortcut through a long wall instead of having to walk around the end and back.
But scientists feel quite certain that there is no getting around the speed-of -light limit. That's why there would be little real chance of a Galactic Empire. Even if there are many intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, each will probably remain isolated from the others.
Those who someday explore the galaxy will find it a long, slow process in which different settlements could easily become isolated in the vastness of space. Science fiction writers of the past usually underestimated how fast things change. In 1900, most writers who visualized air flight thought of dirigibles or of small airplanes.
When they imagined rocket ships going to the Moon, they didn't think of all the ways in which we now use space. Back then, most didn't think of communications, weather, and navigational satellites. But they did think of spacesuits very much like those that real astronauts have used.
They also imagined things like television, microfilm, tape recorders, lasers, and even charge cards. On a lot of things, science fiction writers of long ago were right.
Science fiction writers often envisioned war in space, but they tended to imagine air battles with spaceships maneuvered rapidly, shooting each other down with disintegrator rays. We still see that in science fiction movies.
This is a picture from Star Wars, a movie that tells the story of a galaxywide civil war. In real life, disintegrator rays have become laser beams manipulated by computers. But in spite of differences between science fact and fiction, real war in space could match or surpass fictional wars in one important way-the terrible power to actually destroy our planet.
So far, no war has ever been fought in space, but weapons designed to destroy satellites have been tested. Surely a war in space would be a tragic way for science fiction to predict science fact. Most people in the 1800s probably thought that the inventions we call television, air-conditioned skyscrapers, and spacecraft were far-off dreams, probably impossible fiction. But these and many other dreams of science fiction writers are everyday parts of modern life. Sometimes science fiction does become fact.
For example, a French science fiction writer, Jules Verne, wrote of a spaceship shot to the Moon by a cannon--from Florida. This picture from the movie A Trip to the Moon, based on Verne's story, shows the giant cannon firing. The result: the bulletlike spaceship is plunged right into the eye of our nearest neighbor. A Trip to the Moon, made in 1902, was the first science fiction movie.
In 1926, Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction, appeared. From then on, more and more writers described space travel. They generally used rockets, the one method we have discovered that really works. They traveled not only to the Moon, the planets, and their satellites in their stories, but also to other stars.
We can now see where science fiction writers guessed wrong. Most described rocket ships zipping across the solar system as though they were airplanes going from New York to Los Angeles. Actually, it takes rockets months to travel to Mars, and years to reach the distant outer planets. If rockets kept their engines firing, they could go a little faster. But in real life, rockets simply can't carry enough fuel to do that for long.
In many science fiction stories, people on spaceships were pictured as leading normal lives, just as if they were on ocean liners. The writers knew that spaceships coasting through space would experience zero gravity, or weightlessness, but most just assumed that there would be some sort of artificial gravity.
In reality, so far at least, astronauts on real spaceships have had to live with weightlessness and cramped living conditions. Naturally, science fiction writers want their stories to be exciting. But making a story more exciting doesn't always make it more accurate.
Jules Verne described a trip to the Moon, but didn't have his heroes land. That wasn't exciting enough. In H.G. Wells's 1901 story, The First Men in the Moon, the heroes not only land on the Moon, but encounter an advanced civilization. This scene is from the 1964 movie version of Wells's story. But the Moon in fact has not been like the Moon in fiction. When human beings actually did land on the Moon in 1969, they found no civilization.
The Moon was a completely dead world. When the landing was made, however, hundreds of millions of people on Earth watched it on television. That was one achievement the early science fiction writers hadn't thought of-watching a Moon landing on television.
Early science fiction writers assumed that all the planets of our solar system were pretty much Earth-like. There would be grain fields on Mars, irrigated by water from the canals. Settlers on Venus would hunt dinosaurs. And as scientists learned that planetary atmospheres were not breathable, writers invented domed or underground cities with special atmospheres.
If, in the future, we do want to explore or settle other parts of the solar system, we may have to do something like this. In order to live in space, we will have to work in space. And to do that we will first have to build a space station close to Earth. It would be a place where people could permanently live, work, and put together new spaceships for exploration farther out in space. Soviet rocket scientist and space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about space stations in a 1920 science fiction story.
Since the 1950s, scientists have designed space stations as great spinning wheels. The spin would produce effects resembling gravity. Space stations haven't been built yet, but when they are, they will probably be smaller and simpler than those that have been imagined.
In order to make their stories more exciting, science fiction writers often imagine different forms of life on various planets. Usually, the writers include advanced, intelligent life forms that might often be hostile to humans.
In reality, we have no actual evidence--at least not yet--that any life exists beyond Earth. But still we dream of seeking and finding advanced life forms among the stars. The idea of star travel is appealing, but it's not very realistic. For instance, if there were a Galactic Empire or Federation, how would its members communicate?
And how would people travel from one star to the next? Ever since 1905, scientists have known that nothing we know of can possibly go faster than the speed of light, which travels at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) a second.
Science fiction writers are forced to break the laws of nature and imagine something like "hyperspace," through which spaceships can go faster than light-like taking a shortcut through a long wall instead of having to walk around the end and back.
But scientists feel quite certain that there is no getting around the speed-of -light limit. That's why there would be little real chance of a Galactic Empire. Even if there are many intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, each will probably remain isolated from the others.
Those who someday explore the galaxy will find it a long, slow process in which different settlements could easily become isolated in the vastness of space. Science fiction writers of the past usually underestimated how fast things change. In 1900, most writers who visualized air flight thought of dirigibles or of small airplanes.
When they imagined rocket ships going to the Moon, they didn't think of all the ways in which we now use space. Back then, most didn't think of communications, weather, and navigational satellites. But they did think of spacesuits very much like those that real astronauts have used.
They also imagined things like television, microfilm, tape recorders, lasers, and even charge cards. On a lot of things, science fiction writers of long ago were right.
Science fiction writers often envisioned war in space, but they tended to imagine air battles with spaceships maneuvered rapidly, shooting each other down with disintegrator rays. We still see that in science fiction movies.This is a picture from Star Wars, a movie that tells the story of a galaxywide civil war. In real life, disintegrator rays have become laser beams manipulated by computers. But in spite of differences between science fact and fiction, real war in space could match or surpass fictional wars in one important way-the terrible power to actually destroy our planet.
So far, no war has ever been fought in space, but weapons designed to destroy satellites have been tested. Surely a war in space would be a tragic way for science fiction to predict science fact. Most people in the 1800s probably thought that the inventions we call television, air-conditioned skyscrapers, and spacecraft were far-off dreams, probably impossible fiction. But these and many other dreams of science fiction writers are everyday parts of modern life. Sometimes science fiction does become fact.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario