> Better to be lazy and wait for technology to improve before ever setting out into the stars. SF literature gives a couple of counter-examples of why you migh

> Better to be lazy and wait for technology to improve before ever setting out into the stars. SF literature gives a couple of counter-examples of why you might do it anyway. In van Vogt's "Far Centaurus" (1952) at https://archive.org/details/destinationunive0000aeva/page/8/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/destinationunive0000aeva/page/8/... the protagonists take 500 years to get to Alpha Centauri. The interstellar drive was created less than 140 years after departure. By the time the explorers arrive, the trip from Earth takes 3 hours. The protagonists are met as heroes, with their local mentor and guide having been trained since childhood to work with them. But the future is not a good place for them - for one, they emit what our future descendants consider to be a foul smell. Luckily, there's a solution - a time jump which puts them back to a year an a half after they left. Just like the cited "Wait Calculation" paper posits "Scientific progress .. may even solve the riddle of travel at light speeds or beyond", we must also posit posit that scientific progress may solve the riddle of time travel. In Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" (1956) at https://archive.org/details/timeforstars0000unse/page/230/mode/2up?q=columbus https://archive.org/details/timeforstars0000unse/page/230/mo... the relativistic sublight ships are eventually met by FTL ships after about 63 years of Earth time, while only a few years of shipboard time have passed. The crew of the sublight ship are irked that their mission is canceled because the new ships are so much more capable: > Uncle Alfred McNeil leaned forward and said in a soft, tragic voice that spoke for all of us, “Just a moment, sir. Are you telling us that what we did . . . wasn’t necessary?” > Mr. Whipple looked startled. “No, no, no! I’m terribly sorry if I gave that impression. What you did was utterly necessary, or there would not be any null ships today. Why, that’s like saying that what Columbus did wasn’t necessary, simply because we jump across oceans as if they were mud puddles nowadays.” In this universe, telepathy exists, and experiments carried out between telepaths light years apart provided information used to develop FTL. The suggestion is that if they not gone, development of FTL would not (yet) have occurred. That's the reason Heinlein made the coat of arms of the Long Range Foundation be “Bread Cast Upon the Waters”.