Need Smaller Astronauts? Five Dubious SF Solutions to the Problem of Astronaut Mass

[james_davis_nicoll]

Should miniaturizing your astronauts fail, here are some other options to consider—especially if ethics aren't a major concern...

Need Smaller Astronauts? Five Dubious SF Solutions to the Problem of Astronaut Mass

Comments

[ba_munronoe]

IICR there's another Japanese light novel in which the astronaut (cosmonaut) is a vampire, which makes me wonder: if you have a vampire as a pilot and she stays in bat form during the acceleration period, will the rocket's velocity change if she returns to full size afterwards?

[petrea_mitchell]

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut. It made a decent midlist anime series. Vampires in that one can't change into bats, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't it "day" most of the time in space? In C. S. Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet", it's tremendously sunny up there.

Does she go up in a pod full of the soil of her homeland? Is it O.K. dehydrated?

Robert Carnegie

[ba_munronoe]

It is something of an open question as to whether vampires _have_ to sleep during the daytime. The O.G., Bram Stoker's Dracula, could get around on cloudy days, although under those conditions he couldn't use his Vampire Powers. The dirt requirement? I dunno how much is needed, and in any case a lot of fictional vampires don't seem to follow that rule. As for the "burning up" business, just keep the windows closed? It's not like spaceships are guided by looking out the window.

[mikeda]

The day didn't even need to be cloudy. Sunlight did not injure Stoker's Dracula although his powers were reduced during the daytime (although he could still shapeshift at sunrise, sunset, and noon).

[bunsen_h]

"Sleep well?"
"Sleeping is not the problem. Waking up -- that is a problem. I've always had hard time getting up when it's dark outside."
"But in space it's always dark."
"I know, I know."
Sinclair and Ivanova, B5 episode "Signs and Portents"

[patrick_morris_miller]

See also: how any magic user can kill a paladin with a boulder and a sling.

[scott_sanford]

The companion question to this one is, "If werewolves are real, how close does Apollo 11 get to the moon before Buzz Aldrin transforms?"

(Take a look at a group photo of the Apollo astronauts sometime. It's completely obvious which one is going to be found running naked through the woods howling and peeing on trees. Also, he might be a werewolf.)

[austin_dern]

(Starts sketching out short story about an astronaut who keeps getting posted to Support Crew assignments, never making backup or prime crew, and can't work it out, finally exploring the mystery and discovering that their medical results show they've got werewolfism that just never manifested, and they're good enough to not be worth bouncing from the program for that but there's no sense sending them to the Moon when there's certified non-werewolf candidates available.)

(Remembers he never actually writes a story so the heck with it.)