Tau Zero by Poul Anderson is another one on the same line; a Bussard ramjet damaged such that it couldn't turn around. Because the Bussard ramjet provides both propulsion and radiation/particle shielding, they can't turn it off, so just get faster and faster...
Yes, but taking into account any drive that uses mass you couldn't carry enough to accelerate for very long. There's been a lot of speculation about scooping up hydrogen from the interstellar medium as fuel, but I think it's mainly wishful thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero
My take on hard sci-fi is that it must either use science and technology that we already understand, in ways conforming to that understanding, or - if it presents new technology that is posited as something beyond our understanding - it must be consistent, including other "magic" as well as interactions with things we do know. Some examples of what I would consider hard sci-fi: "Tau Zero", "Tales of Pirx the Pilot", "2001", "Seveneves", the Mars trilogy. All of these components are lacking in the book, and it's not just the particles. It reads very much like someone subscribed to some…
Also they have trouble stopping in Tau Zero so they have no choice going further than they planned. It's one of the best sci-fi novels of all time, read it!. That Bussard Ramjet, though, is thoroughly discredited. It can't possibly work. Hydrogen hydrogen fusion is a terribly slow nuclear reaction and if you had to stop the gas to give it enough time to react, you'd end up stopping the rocket not accelerating it. In fact, the most credible use of that kind of magnetic scoop is as a brake!
Spoken like someone who’s never read the Relativistic Rocket: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/... I really find it hard to understand how people confuse science fiction with reality. I love Tau Zero - I first read it over 40 years ago - but it’s fiction, ffs.
Have you read the book? They travel across the known universe in less than the span of a human lifetime. OP said "tens of thousands of years of travel". Or are you being deliberately obtuse about relativistic time dilation?
> the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Spoken like someone who's never read Tau Zero
Nothing about Tau Zero refutes what the parent wrote. It reinforces it. Plus, even Tau Zero's initial premise is a pipe dream.
IIRC in the novel Tau Zero the world kind of decided to let Sweden govern everything because they were so good at it. It's not central to the plot though, it's just mentioned in passing (and again I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly).
There are very few sci-fi movies or books where relativity is important and they treat it seriously. Tau Zero is one, I'm not sure about Time for the Stars, but Forever War does have FTL. I created a list of all these works I could find a few years ago. Here is one link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=l6q90mvssgscsj... I think this is a complete list of the films and tv series: - The Star Lost - Pandorum - Passengers (2016)