Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Chapter 3 - Space
Once believed to be infinite, space shrank with the realization that the universe was finite. Dark, cold, and nearly endless... many lost their lives exploring the last frontier known to mankind.
When the first humans looked up at the sky millions of years ago, they had no idea just how far it extended. They believed the sun, moon, and stars all revolved around the Earth. It wasn't until the 19th and 20th centuries that advancements in astronomy proved this to be completely incorrect. It was much, much different...
Approaching absolute zero, but definitely not absolute, space is both finite and infinite. Trillions of objects litter it, and yet it still appears to be a huge empty area with nothing for hundreds of light years or more. Even with all the asteroids, dust clouds, stars, black holes, galaxies, galaxy clusters and dark matter, the place is still so empty.
With humans slowly expanding outwards, space was still the limiting factor. Portal travel made it easy to travel between distinct places, but there was still a lot out there that couldn't be explored because no one could either get to it, or even knew about it. Obviously, this limited exploration to known star systems, and entities within the home galaxy of Earth. Once new planets became effective jumping off points, humanity began to expand outwards again through other galaxies.
Blue giants, yellow giants, white dwarfs, red super-giants... humanity explored them all following the opening of the gate. Amazingly enough, primitive ships with nuclear fuel were used to power these exploration vessels. Humanity had advanced greatly with the ability to teleport instantaneously, but its ships were still very remniscent of early 21st century technology. Even with the largest portal in existance, humanity could only teleport a vessel the size of a 20th century nuclear aircraft carrier into space. These problems lead to great innovations, and soon small portals were put on the largest vessels, allowing food and personnel to be teleported back and forth from Earth to the vessel. No longer were families seperated by the great distances...
Space... the first frontier, the final frontier, and the frontier that would take thousands of generations with trillions of people to explore and exploit to its fullest...
¶ 7:17 PM
Once believed to be infinite, space shrank with the realization that the universe was finite. Dark, cold, and nearly endless... many lost their lives exploring the last frontier known to mankind.
When the first humans looked up at the sky millions of years ago, they had no idea just how far it extended. They believed the sun, moon, and stars all revolved around the Earth. It wasn't until the 19th and 20th centuries that advancements in astronomy proved this to be completely incorrect. It was much, much different...
Approaching absolute zero, but definitely not absolute, space is both finite and infinite. Trillions of objects litter it, and yet it still appears to be a huge empty area with nothing for hundreds of light years or more. Even with all the asteroids, dust clouds, stars, black holes, galaxies, galaxy clusters and dark matter, the place is still so empty.
With humans slowly expanding outwards, space was still the limiting factor. Portal travel made it easy to travel between distinct places, but there was still a lot out there that couldn't be explored because no one could either get to it, or even knew about it. Obviously, this limited exploration to known star systems, and entities within the home galaxy of Earth. Once new planets became effective jumping off points, humanity began to expand outwards again through other galaxies.
Blue giants, yellow giants, white dwarfs, red super-giants... humanity explored them all following the opening of the gate. Amazingly enough, primitive ships with nuclear fuel were used to power these exploration vessels. Humanity had advanced greatly with the ability to teleport instantaneously, but its ships were still very remniscent of early 21st century technology. Even with the largest portal in existance, humanity could only teleport a vessel the size of a 20th century nuclear aircraft carrier into space. These problems lead to great innovations, and soon small portals were put on the largest vessels, allowing food and personnel to be teleported back and forth from Earth to the vessel. No longer were families seperated by the great distances...
Space... the first frontier, the final frontier, and the frontier that would take thousands of generations with trillions of people to explore and exploit to its fullest...
¶ 7:17 PM
