A poll on Mastodon: what’s the overlap between fans of Star Trek and fans of the sci fi genre of solarpunk?

  • bishbosh@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    I think the realities of physics will make true interstellar travel hopeless, so to me solar punk as an aesthetic is the more real idea of humanities possible utopia, should one ever exist. With that, I think it also pretty strongly ties the art with action. These facts giving a more grounding for praxis than start trek.

    • wirehead@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      The way I’ve been looking at it, if you want a chance at the starships, start with the spandex.

      If we want a good and honest chance of being able to do interstellar travel of any sort, we’re not going to get there by building an Enterprise and then hope that someone cooks up a warp drive for it before we finish ruining our only planet.

      Maybe physics is all wrong and there really is a warp drive to be had. If there is one, it’s not the sort of thing you can count on. We have to survive as a species until it happens.

      Conversely, there’s a real easy bet to be had. In 1.29 million years, Gliese 710 will be 0.17 light years away. The GAIA mission has identified some other candidate stars that are going to get fairly close sooner. So there’s a solarpunk space travel bet of simply providing a stable society over the long term such that we can surf the stars.

      Solarpunk is kinda the version that starts with the spandex. I’m at the point in my life where I kinda hate the whole Eugenics-wars/World-War-III thread to Trek because it kinda mutated away from the hopeful idea that we can survive a downturn into the idea that the collapse will create a new world which is … risky.