Dark star encounter from Yefremov's "Andromeda"

[RodionGork]

Hi Friends and Colleagues!

Here comes a book (or rather one chapter of it) recommendation.

Yesterday I was asking in some other thread about situation of starship being attracted to the star, found in some old SF book. In the end I decided to refresh events described in the book - and started re-reading the story. I found (again) it quite thrilling and curious, in technical sense too - so I decided to share this experience :)

I found the text is available online - here you'll find it ready either for reading in-browser - and below on the right there are options to download in several formats. (to my understanding it is in public domain)

But I'm speaking of the single chapter (the first) - describing some star expedition, its goal and issue on return route. I really like such types of "space-fiction" rather than tales of crazy wars with blasters which are set in space but actually are just adaptations of dwarfs-goblins conflicts set in "space-era".

It would be curious if some of you may find 10 minutes to read this first chapter and share your thoughts - including what physical principles author violated or missed. As for the rest of the book - it returns to the story of these astronauts in several other chapters, but they are interwoven with stories of other people (all of them eventually will meet) - the book is more not about space travels, but about futurism, era when all people on the earth unite and work to establish contacts with other stars via Great Ring of interstellar communication etc.

As the book was first published in 1957 in Soviet Union, the social aspects described there may be at places impregnated with communist ideas - though don't be deceived - author's other book in this series, "The Hour of the Bull" (1968) is a kind of "mirror" to this one - an anti-utopy describing the world where communism went wrong way - and obviously with striking resemblance to reality in many countries - for which he was harshly reprimanded and had troubles in publishing rest of his works to the end of his life.

 

[jedishrfu]

Some notes:

"Don't be afraid to speak. Everybody else is asleep, we're the only two awake in the Cosmos and it's fifty billion 1 kilometres to Earth-a mere parsec and a half!"

50 billion kilometers = 0.00162 parsecs

*probably a mistranslation and should be 50 trillion kilometers

instantaneous death there will be years of hopelessness for the doomed. Perhaps they will call. If they do, we'll know ... on Earth ... in about six years' time."

6 light years = 1.8 parsecs

It had been the fourth year for the inhabitants of the spaceship seven of the years known as independent years had passed.

1 years on the spaceship = 1.8 years on Earth hence 4 years = 7.2 years on Earth

---

I read the first 10 pages, and they read a lot like the novel Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, with great scientific and engineering details added in.

It's hard to read older sci-fi novels and figure out the technology described. I think modern authors share some common terms to make it easier for the reader.

 

[256bits]

"Don't be afraid to speak. Everybody else is asleep, we're the only two awake in the Cosmos and it's fifty billion 1 kilometres to Earth-a mere parsec and a half!"

50 billion kilometers = 0.00162 parsecs

*probably a mistranslation and should be 50 trillion kilometers
.....

Where so the 'Notes' some from? the book.
There is:
a short billion - 1 x 10 ⁹ - one thousand million
a long billion - 1 x 10 ¹² - one million million

The book from Russia is using the long scale I would presume.

See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

 

[jedishrfu]

They were my notes from reading the first ten pages.

Thanks, @256bits, for the clarifications; I never knew it applied to most of Europe and so many other non-English-speaking countries.

England had converted to the short convention because of longstanding confusion with the US as late as 1974 when the UK adopted the change.

It's funny because I worked on I18N issues for several years, and it never came up in discussion. We dealt more with sorting matters, dates and times, writing systems left-right vs right-left, and translations of terms, but never this so explicitly.

The I18N api didn't have any locale conversions for this either.

The table in the long and short sections helped a lot, detailing the conventions and logic behind them.

With that adjustment, then the distance makes more sense.