Planet-hopping might not be so silly

Stars in Orion's beltMy science fiction book The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy includes a certain amount of planet-hopping. In fact, all my SF does. Now, I know that there will be some sneering and lip-curling over this. But don’t be in too much of a hurry to point a derisive finger.




Eventually, the obstacles forced upon us by oceans and continents were removed, too, with the advent of air travel. These days you can get on a jet at Schiphol in Amsterdam and get off twenty four hours laterat Perth International Airport. With airliners like the beautiful and now-departed Concord, you could do the journey in half the time. So in four hundred years we have shortened a journey that took about a year – let’s say 350 days – to one that routinely takes 1 day or (with the right aircraft) an awful lot less. Wow.

Still with me? Trust me, it’s all relevant to space travel. Imagine what reaction a person would have received if, in 1600, she’d said that in four hundred years, we’d be able to travel from Amsterdam to that southern continent we didn’t know anything about, in less than a day.

Yes, but that’s just the Earth, I hear you say. We’re talking inter-stellar distances. For Pete’s sake, the nearest star system from ours is over 4 light years away. Very true. We have no way of spanning these vast distances in anybody’s lifetime. Regardless, the notion of ‘hyperspace’ in science fiction to allow for the possibility of space travel has been around for a long time. I don’t think I ever saw an explanation of hyperspace – just that the ship entered another dimension, if you will, travelling externally to our normal, 3D + time. But hey ho; never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The Grand Master, Isaac Asimov, did rather a lot of planet-hopping. Have a look at his ‘Foundation’ series. Many of the more modern writers like Mc Devitt and Moon have FTL (faster than light) travel but show it as still a very time-consuming business with journeys taking weeks or months..

I don’t believe that restriction is cast in concrete. Even Mc Devitt in his book ‘A Talent for War’ postulated a quantum drive, where a ship moves from one place to another instantaneously. We don’t hear so much about worm holes these days, but they would also allow for an instantaneous transfer.



geometric shapes




Since I wrote this article, I’ve come across the Sabre engine, which can operate in both atmosphere and vacuum, and can travel at 5 times the speed of sound. Such an aircraft could make the trip from Sydney to London in 4 hours. That’s four (4) hours. So a trip from Amsterdam to Perth would probably be a little bit less. Say 3.5 hours? So we’ve come down from 350 days, to 1 month, to 1 day, to 3.5 hours. Rams the point home, doesn’t it?

27 Jan 2013 And now there’s this. A spaceliner which will do the trip in 90 minutes!!! Wow. Just wow.

18 thoughts on “Planet-hopping might not be so silly

  1. Pingback: The one Rule of Writing you should never break (IMO) | Greta van der Rol

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  3. akismet-774b0267bf2250d929a1867a09aedfd9

    HI Greta, now I understand. When we spoke on twitter and you mentioned shift dimensions, I imagined you were talking about paralell universes.

    I’m gonna have to take a peak at your novel to see how you do it. (cheeky grin)



    1. Greta van der Rol

      Yes, I thought you thought I meant parallel universes. Sorry, but (much as I’d like you to read my books) I don’t actually go into the mechanics of ‘shift space’

  4. Pauline Baird Jones

    Readers accept time travel through such devices as jewelry, closets, caves and portraits. Why wouldn’t they accept planet hopping? Oh wait, most do. For the cranky few who don’t, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here.” (grin)

  5. Pat Brown

    The biggest obstacle right now is establishing a permanent presence off the Earth. If we can do that, all our energy problems would be done with and there’d never be a shortage of any material. To do that we need to find a more efficient way of moving around in our solar system. The fuels used now are just not able to do it, plus they have mass and that mass means you need more fuel to move the extra mass of the mass.

    There is a way to use almost no fuel, and it is being tested, but I’m not sure how much backing it gets, but it might very well work. Solar sails could let us really settle our solar system. Then we look at the stars, which will be a lot easier from space. Launching things from Earth takes massive amounts of energy to escape the gravity well of Earth.

    I really hope we do get into space and colonize it. It might very well be the difference between us surviving or not. And the longer we wait, the more expensive it will get, as the resources needed will be more costly and short sighted people will look at space programs as a waste of money (which they’ve actually been saying since the Apollo program)

    1. Greta van der Rol

      Thanks for your comment. It saddens me to watch prgrams about the outer solar system, knowing that the best information they STILL have comes from Voyager, launched way back in the 1970’s. Hubble and Cassini have helped but there is so much to learn. I truly hope space exploration is not canned.

  6. claudia celestial girl

    Wonderful blog! The distances between stars in space is so immense that travel is problematic. If the travel is by conventional sub-light travel, then there has to be hibernation and/or (as you get close to lightspeed), some mass bending (uncomfortable), and time-shortening. Space-farers won’t like to do it because of the physical strain. I haven’t figured it all out yet! .

    So your thoughts here are really helpful. Sounds a lot like A Wrinkle in Time.

  7. Heikki Hietala

    You rascal you.

    I am working on a short story / novella based on a generation ship, but your planet-hopping begins to sound more lucrative for future work. I have Sagan’s book, and I have read Flatland (my favorite was the fact that you could not have a digestive tract since it’d split you in half, hence no need to eat there), and I am quite happy to believe we will get a technology that enables near-instant travel.

    1. Greta van der Rol

      It isn’t going to happen tomorrow, and I know I put an over-simple argument but I think we’ll get there – if we have the will in the future. After all, it IS science FICTION

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