space travel

[Tundra]

So, I've got this sci fi story idea. I want to have some of the story on the ship, some on the new planet that they're colonising. But I'm trying to figure out how that would work without making the time on the ship far too short... I've got years that i can have them travelling in, but yeah... I need rational ways for them to not be on the ship the whole story.
Any ideas?
I've thought of - suspended animation for part of the journey. But why only part of the journey, why not all? Unless i suppose, the crew were in and out of suspended animation in shifts, to run the ship, and they're out of suspended animation for a few years at a time?

That they've been travelling for generations, maybe the characters could have spend most of their childhoods on the ship, and end up on the other planet, so they're the last generation of ship dwelling people.

Wormholes...

[snooze]

Flashbacks might help to shift the setting at certain times?
They could stop for a picnic on Mars; or say Capt. Kirk has to take a pee-pee break on Pluto so they all get out to stretch their legs and admire the scenery.
Maybe another ship is in distress and they go to help the other ship? Or they investigate mysterious happenings on an asteroid or unknown planet?

[Tundra]

yes, I can do that sort of thing. But what i meant was, part of it is travel to the new planet that they're colonising, the other part is set on the new planet.

[MichaelB]

If it starts with them travelling, and not setting out, then why not have them just about to arrive? That way you don't need to have too much boring day-to-day stuff happen before "Land ahoy!". It could be an interesting dramatic point to have a conversation suddenly interrupted by the cheers of the crew.

[Aimless]

Definitely, pick up the story shortly before they reach the new planet so they can study it, make sure everything on the ship's okay, make sure everyone is doing well etc. They'd probably need to like exercise and stuff for a month or so.

[vindemiatrix]

And if the ship's been travelling for that long there's bound to be things that have gone wrong and will need to be adjusted quickly or patched up before the landing. Or during, even.

[Aimless]

They need to bake lots and lots of brownies.

For the aliens :o :o

They'll prolly also wanna survey every planet in the system quickly :) by sending out satellites, of course.

Satellites made of chocolate http://forum.fantasy-freak.com/images/smiles/lurk.gif

We need to add this smiley. It's called Lurk :o

[Tundra]

oh, I wasn't really asking where to start the story... more... how would their version of space travel work, so that I can have part of the story on the ship and part on land? And no, it's not going to be faster than light stuff, though if they're going to a different sun that'd still take ages even with faster than light.

[Aimless]

Well in that case this might be interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel :)

Esp. this perhaps_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_catalyzed_nuclear_pulse_propulsion

:)

[Tundra]

yeah already found the interstellar travel one, thanks for the other link, i'll have a look. I'm more just looking for opinions

[Aimless]

You can make it work no matter which alternative you choose, I reckon. Even at FTL speeds they'll need to travel quite a while :P

EDIT: You might wanna check out Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, for some ideas. His lighthuggers are very neat :) They travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and for most of a trip, most members of the crew are in cryogenic sleep or whatever.

[Tundra]

yeah, they're going to be in cryogenics or something.

I *never* said this would be realistic.

[Aimless]

Doesn't have to be :D

But, well, my ideas have already been posted :) They'd need to get up quite some time before they reach the planet for maintenance, surveying,regaining health, etc.

[Kail]

Two things I can think of:

- Other people have mentioned this, but the idea that they'd just be hibernating and then woken up some time before landing doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. If they're going to colonize some planet, it's likely that they would have only very sketchy information about it before they land. Even if there have been previous explorations, barring faster than light travel, it would be a looong time before they could get any information about the planet back. They'd probably (at a bare minimum) have to choose a landing site and do some surveys from orbit before they land. It seems like it would be difficult to program a computer to know everything that would make for an ideal landing spot. Depending on the tech you're using, they might have to do more from orbit (deploying satellites and so on) so you could concievably stratch this out a fair bit.

-Richard Morgan does this thing with his characters in which their "minds" are stored digitally, while their bodies are put in hibernation. So, while their ship is travelling, the characters are in cryogenic sleep, but their minds are all hooked up to a VR program, so the characters can still walk around and talk to each other and so on. The time scale on the program can be accelerated or decelerated from "real time" to make time in the virtual world flow faster or slower, so his characters could turn it way down so that they only experience maybe a year of time over the course of the entire trip. One character was piloting the ship, and she had to keep jacking out every day or so (which was, like, once a century in real time) to check their course and do maintenance. I thought it was an interesting idea.

[Ariella]

Maybe humans can only stand to be in cryo-freeze for several years at a time, and if it's any more than that, their bodies(and brain-cells o noez) would get damaged.

[Tundra]

I think i'm going to have them going into cyrogenics or whatever, in 'shifts'.

[phage2004]

You might want to read some of the Exiles series by Ben Bova, he had a whole series of books about a ship trying to make it to another star system without any faster then light abilities, it was kind of interesting, I thought.