Space travel in science fiction

spaceship that would reach a 700-mile altitude on a one-hour flight from Berlin to New York '' TV series premiere (1965), depicting space travelers in suspended animation A classic, defining trope of the science fiction genre is that the action takes place in space, either aboard a spaceship or on another planet. In such a grand view, space travel, and inventions such as various forms of "star drive", can be seen as metaphors for freedom, including "free[ing] mankind from the prison of the solar system".), whose authors, often scientists like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Max Valier, focused on the more plausible concept of interplanetary travel (to the Moon or Mars); and the more grandiose, less realistic stories of "escape from Earth into a Universe filled with worlds", which gave rise to the genre of space opera, pioneered by E. E. Smith and popularized by the television series Star Trek, which debuted in 1966. This trend continues to the present, with some works focusing on "the myth of space flight", and others on "realistic examination of space flight"; the difference can be described as that between the authors' concern with the "imaginative horizons rather than hardware". While the theme of space travel has generally been seen as optimistic, With other early films, such as Woman in the Moon (1929) and Things to Come (1936), it contributed to an early recognition of the rocket as the iconic, primary means of space travel, decades before space programs began. I == Means of travel ==

Generic terms for engines enabling science fiction spacecraft propulsion include "space drive" and "star drive". The 2007 Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction lists the following terms related to the concept of space drive: gravity drive, hyperdrive, ion drive, jump drive, overdrive, ramscoop (a synonym for ram-jet), reaction drive, stargate, ultradrive, warp drive and torchdrive. Some works sport numerous alternative star drives; for example the Star Trek universe, in addition to its iconic "warp drive", has introduced concepts such as "transwarp", "slipstream" and "spore drive", among others. Many, particularly early, writers of science fiction did not address means of travel in much detail, and many writings of the "proto-SF" era were disadvantaged by their authors' living in a time when knowledge of space was very limited — in fact, many early works did not even consider the concept of vacuum and instead assumed that an atmosphere of sorts, composed of air or "aether", continued indefinitely. George Mann mentions Robert A. Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) and Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space (1951) as early, influential modern works that emphasized the scientific and engineering aspects of space travel. Interstellar travel Slower than light With regard to interstellar travel, in which faster-than-light speeds are generally considered unrealistic, more realistic depictions of interstellar travel have often focused on the idea of "generation ships" that travel at sub-light speed for many generations before arriving at their destinations. Other scientifically plausible concepts of interstellar travel include suspended animation and, less often, ion drive, solar sail, Bussard ramjet, and time dilation. Invention of completely made-up devices enabling space travel has a long tradition — already in the early 20th century, Verne criticized H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon (1901) for abandoning realistic science (his spaceship relied on anti-gravitic material called "cavorite"). Of fictitious drives, by the mid-1970s the concept of hyperspace travel was described as having achieved the most popularity, and would subsequently be further popularized — as hyperdrive — through its use in the Star Wars franchise. While the fictitious drives "solved" problems related to physics (the difficulty of faster-than-light travel), some writers introduce new wrinkles — for example, a common trope involves the difficulty of using such drives in close proximity to other objects, in some cases allowing their use only beginning from the outskirts of the planetary systems. While usually the means of space travel is just a means to an end, in some works, particularly short stories, it is a central plot device. These works focus on themes such as the mysteries of hyperspace, or the consequences of getting lost after an error or malfunction. == See also ==