Re: The Long Way Home (was Re: Retro Review: Out Around Rigel, by Robert H. Wilson)

Brian said:

I'm not totally disagreeing with you on this, but you should consider
that "engineering and science" have "generally got done" different
ways at different times and depending on the doers and their purpose.

Which is largely irrelevant to a book written in the 50's.

Well, to begin with engineering in the 50's _was_ more reckless and
less concerned with safety procedures than it is today. And secondly,
the _story_ wasn't set in the 1950's: it was set at some future date (I
haven't read it for a long time so I don't remember when), and Poul
Anderson could assume whatever he wanted about the engineering culture
of his hypothetical mid-terrm future in order to bring about the voyage
of his heroes to the far future in which most of the novel was set.

I don't think that it's reasonable to assume that our current attitude
towards engineering safety will be any more eternal than any other
cultural feature of the present day. 50-100 years from now we may have
become so cautious that progress slows to a snail's creep, so reckless
that we progress by leaps and bounds but equipment accidents routinely
claim millions of lives, or anywhere in between.

An individual inventor can cut a lot of corners that a large research
project can't, because he doesn't have to coordinate his work with
anyone but himself or meet anyone's safety standards but his own (of
course, the price of this is that individual inventors are also far
more likely to make project-fatal errors). At some times a field
progresses by the efforts of gifted loners and at some times by the
efforts of giant research teams.

Again, irrelevant, because this WAS a large-scale project.

It's not irrelevant to my larger point that engineering standards
change over time: you cannot assume that the standards of today apply
to the 1950's, and still less can you assume that they apply to a
hypothetical future that someone _writing_ in the 1950's imagined.

By the time of this book, most research and developement was done by corporations, universities, or governments.

Yes, and they were _still_ far more ambitious and far less
safety-conscious than is the norm today. If you mean "by the time that
Poul Anderson set the launch of his hypothetical starship," who knows?
Engineering culture not only differs from time to time but also from
place to place: the Chinese are for instance doing thing in their
recent dam project that we wouldn't _dare_ do with our environmental
impact rules. If Poul Anderson's future space agency chose to cut
corners, that's something that requires very little suspension of
disbelief to imagine -- different culture, different standards.

By the same token (getting back to "Out Around Rigel") though you'll
notice that I flagged as odd the Lunarian notion that the best way to
test the _Comet_ was to launch her on a 1000-LY, six-month voyage, I
ultimately concluded that this is believable provided that we assume
that the Lunarians have (as some Earthly cultures have had) an
"aristocratic" or "chivalric" attitude towards danger -- a belief that
every gentleman should aspire to be a hero, and that small challenges
and small risks are unworthy of such a hero.

Note that this would be entirely consistent with the attitude that
Garth displays towards the love triangle with Dunal and Kelvar.
Instead of talking to his friends about it ("whining") or trying to
seduce Kelvar away from Dunal ("dishonorable") he considers it
reasonable to force a mortal duel upon Dunal so that the winner ("the
better man") will get the girl. Note that while Dunal is dismayed at
this turn of events, he's dismayed mostly because he can't bear himself
to slay his best friend. He does _not_ try to convince Garth that the
duel would be evil or silly -- which shows that Dunal, though less rash
than Garth, shares Garth's basic cultural assumptions.

Incidenatlly, it's occurred to me that, given the portrayed
recklessness of someone who must have been one of the the Lunarian
civilization's "best and brightest," that there is a darker possible
explanation for the rather geologically sudden devastation of Luna than
the "swarm of meteors" Dunal assumes. In other words, it seems likely
to me that the Lunarians, harnessing for military purposes the energies
that enabled the _Comet_ to travel to the stars, may have destroyed
their own world in a foolish internecine war. People who thought the
way Garth did might have even done it for some abtruse point of honor
that we would not consider a reasonable cause for war.

Witness the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo project which began not all that long after this book (it was written in 1955). That's the more typical R&D model for mid-20 Century. <

Ok.

To begin with, even though Mercury/Gemini launched unmanned test shots
before the manned launches, it actually _was_ a pretty reckless
endeavor by modern standards. One of the Mercury capsules filled with
water and sank soon after landing, nearly taking the astronaut down
with the ship (we retrieved that capsule recently). The control
systems were primitive and another capsule nearly spun out of control
before re-entry (which, if the pilot hadn't kept his cool, would have
caused it to burn up on reentry).

The Soyuz program, launched by the Soviets at around the same time, was
even more reckless. The early Soyuz ships were death traps (the modern
Soyuz ships are much safer, even though they share the name and the
same basic hull design). One almost burned up on re-entry, killing the
crew. Another suffered a parachute malfunction and crashed on landing,
nearly killing its crew. There are persistent rumors of additional
secret launches that also suffered fatal accidents.

One reason for this was that the Americans and Soviets were in a race
to the Moon, and were cutting corners. Another reason, though, was
that the engineering culture, led by people who remembered the hectic
days of World War II, when civilization hung in the balance and that
slightly-faster fighter or slightly-quieter submarine had to be gotten
into production NOW, was simply more reckless in general.

That's the more typical R&D model for mid-20 Century.<

Anderson's starship didn't launch in the mid-20th century.

There's just no way that the first flight of a prototype vehicle is going to an indefinite multi-lightyear voyage, out of contact with home. Especially not in a ship that the builders don't fully understand AND isn't even working properly. <

Well, _we_ sure wouldn't do it that way. Not here, not now.

But I can't say for sure what others, in another time and place, might
do.

We come from a species that has launched intercontinental oceanic
voyages where the ships had a 1/3 chance each of coming back home and
the crews had considerably lower chances of survival; which used to
have passenger steamboat races, for no reason other than to claim the
title of "fastest," in which one of the boats sometimes _exploded_; and
whose first atomic explosives test was conducted with some of the
testers believing that there was a chance that the whole PLANET might
participate in the chain reaction. So I wouldn't rule out some space
agency doing what Anderson's did, or even for that matter, what
_Wilson_'s did (especially since the Lunarians probably were not
biologically even human).

Big Universe, lots of sociocultural possibilities.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

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