A Centenial Celebration

[stickmaker]

The Joy of High Tech series is a long-running collection of columns on both real technology and - as here - speculative technology. This one is an exploration of the copper-based technology of the classic SF book The Skylark of Space.

 

 

 

The Joy of High Tech

 

by

 

Rodford Edmiston

 

 

Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of a major-league technophile.

 

 

 

Skylarking

 

 

 

In 1916 (1915, according to some sources) Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby - who helped with the romantic portions and with her husband were the model for the Cranes - completed about a third of the original version of The Skylark of Space. The precise reasons for stopping have not been recorded, but likely had to do with both the Great War and the demands placed on the work Smith - who was working on an advanced degree - was doing for his job and his degree. In 1917 he received his doctorate in chemistry, focusing on food engineering. 

So, by 1919 Doc Smith had his degree and good job and also an expanding family. All this - especially the 1918 birth of Roderick, the first child of Doc and his wife (originally Jeanne Craig MacDougall, whose sister Clarissa MacLean MacDougall was the source of the name for the Lensman character) - meant staying at home more. He resumed work on the story, finishing it in the Spring of 1920. After multiple rejections - some with encouraging responses - he sold the tale to Amazing Stories. It appeared as a three-part serial, beginning in the August, 1928 issue, and even got the cover for that first month. The story was an immediate hit. However, that was also the issue the magazine began publishing Armageddon 2419 A.D., which led to the Buck Rogers comic strip, movie serials and so forth. Many historians therefore claim the cover image is of Anthony "Buck" Rogers and crew. 

Doc likely began writing Skylark Three (which is named after the third Skylark spacecraft, counting the rebuild in the first story as the second ship, and is not the third story in the series, to the endless confusion of generations of readers) even before the first Skylark story sold. He stated that he planned to end the series there - which is probably why he seemed to kill off Marc DuQuesne in the second book - but was later persuaded to continue it. 

The original, magazine serial version of The Skylark of Space has been in public domain for a while. You can download it from Project Gutenberg ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20869 ). I believe at least the second novel is also in public domain ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21051 ). They are obviously dated, and products of their time in many ways, but are well worth the perusal for students of SF.

Reading the first version of the original story, you realize why Doc Smith wanted to re-write it for the book printing. His style had grown by then, and the original version - which often contains descriptions and characterizations which reveal its age - had some uncomfortable features, a few of which are blatantly racist. However, for some reason, during the rewrite for the book printing he left out a number of details on the operation of the copper conversion technology. Perhaps to avoid restricting himself in the sequels. Reading the original provides answers to several questions about technical details and some story elements. 

Note that Doc was well aware of the scientific nonsensicalities in the Skylark stories, which was one reason he wanted to end the series. Among other problems, there just isn't enough energy in matter to push a ship very close to the speed of light. Ignoring relativity (which we could excuse Doc Smith for doing, since Einsteinian mechanics were brand new when he first wrote the story, though he does mention them) and staying with purely Newtonian mechanics, about a third of the ship's starting mass is used getting to 0.9 C. Even with total conversion and reactionless thrust, that's a lot of mass. The percentage is far more than it takes in the books to get to many times the speed of light. Using relativistic equations, you need 130% of the ship's mass equivalent in energy to get to 90% of light speed. Without some sort of external energy source or perhaps a staged design, a spacecraft simply cannot carry enough energy - even with total conversion - to reach significantly relativistic speeds. (This is one reason such designs as the Bussard Ramjet are popular for speculations about sublight interstellar travel, since they take their fuel/reaction mass from the space they traverse.)

Therefore, copper propulsion is not an interstellar drive, at least not for humans for anything but the closest stars, even using some sort of staged process. It could be used to send probes to other stars at very close to light speed. However, for such short distances as exist inside the Solar System this technology would be revolutionary.  

  The accelerations described are also problematic. One of the more interesting of the technical details from the original version of the first story is that one notch of thrust consistently produces about half a g. This is true in both the smaller ship DuQuesne flies and the Skylark, itself. The Skylark has a double drive with each bar capable of providing thirty notches of thrust. That's thirty g total. Yet Seaton remains conscious at 16 g, and the whole crew survives something like seventy-two hours at maximum throttle, which is about twice that. In spite of "special chairs" and suits and breathing pure oxygen at plus pressure, that's not really possible... unless there's something else going on. (Let's not dwell on Doc's problem with confusing speed and acceleration.)

Unless the thrust is actually a gravity-like warping of space ahead of the ship. Something like the Alcubierre space warp drive. Which might also explain the absurd speeds the ships obtain with their copper drives.

Let's take a look at what Seaton says about the effects he discovers: 

"First: That it is a practically irresistible pull along the axis of the treated wire or bar. It is apparently focused at infinity, as near-by objects are not affected.

"Second: I have studied two of the border-line regions of current we discussed. I have found that in one the power is liberated as a similar attractive force but is focused upon the first object in line with the axis of the bar. As long as the current is applied it remains focused upon that object, no matter what comes between. In the second border-line condition the power is liberated as a terrific repulsion.

"Third: That the copper is completely transformed into available energy, there being no heat whatever liberated."

So, we have two versions of a pure attractive force - one of which may actually be warping space in the direction it is pointed so that the ship literally falls in that direction - which both act linearly, and a pure repulsive force (which from subsequent descriptions appears to act radially). The story implies that the copper conversion technology also can be a source of whatever form of energy is wanted. This is all accomplished through a direct conversion of matter at very close (as noted in later stories, it's not perfect) to 100% efficiency. Any competent engineer could revolutionize the world with any one of these effects. 

As a space drive, the copper bar would open up the solar system, as mentioned above. At closest approach, Mars is a little over a day away at a constant one gravity of acceleration, turning over halfway to decelerate to a relative stop. Naturally, you also have to take into account the velocity difference of the two planets, besides just covering the distance. The maximum difference between the orbital velocities of Earth and Mars is less than 8,000 m/s. At one g that's just a bit over thirteen minutes. Depending on the exact geometry of the situation, you would almost certainly add less time than that to the trip, simply by adjusting your direction of acceleration and the turnover point. 

Likewise, at closest approach Jupiter is just about five days away at one g. 

In the second novel we learn that there is a way to apply the accelerative force uniformly to the entire contents of the ship. Many people have theorized this effect is inherent to the copper drive. That in the basic form Seaton originally developed, this effect was only partially active. This means that even with the original drive it's possible to use higher accelerations without the occupants feeling the full effect. Either way, the higher accelerations the second version of the drive allows really open things up.

The trip to Mars described above takes 19.6 hours at two g, contrasting with the 29.1 at one g. The higher acceleration means a higher copper consumption, though. The way the math works out the increase in energy required is roughly proportional to the increase in acceleration (note that for long trips such high accelerations cause relativistic effects to become significant, increasing copper consumption). So this trip uses about twice as much copper. 

Let's really bump things up, to forty g. The near Mars trip time drops to 4.6 hours. However, this high acceleration uses roughly forty times as much copper as the one g trip. Keep in mind, though, the concentration of energy in matter. For a ten tonne spacecraft (hey, we're talking about Doc Smith, here; that's small) the one g Mars trip uses just thirty-one grams of copper. The two g trip takes fifty-six. The forty g trip takes a bit less than one and a quarter kilograms of copper. 

The second effect Seaton describes appears to work in a manner similar to quantum entanglement. This is a subatomic effect where two particles can be associated in a way which persists and is instantaneous no matter how far the particles are separated. This is apparently an impressive application of real science. Especially when you realize quantum entanglement wasn't formally described until 1935 in a paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, as well as in several papers by Erwin Schrödinger later that year. (Mention this long-verified faster-than-light effect to most physicists and they'll shuffle their feet and mutter things like "apparent but not real" and "can't send information." Actually, there's a lot about quantum mechanics which produces that effect.) 

Using the secondary attractive effect to move objects at a distance has a vast array of uses. Couple that with the object compass application, and you have something which could be applied in myriad ways. It can track items and individuals. Measure distances to astronomical objects. (I haven't found a clue in the stories as to whether the act of locking on to something is an instantaneous quantum effect or is limited to the speed of light. Even if the latter, we could lock onto the nearer stars with a little patience and persistent tracking, probably using in-system probes coupled with telescopes.)

Where either attractive effect is obviously purely linear, the repulsive effect - as mentioned above - appears to be radial. I believe it is only described in detail as being applied through the copper strips or plates on the exterior of a spherical craft. The screens mentioned in later books are something different, and operate on the principle of interference between generated electromagnetic fields. 

The basic repulsive effect still allows for some interesting uses. First, of course, is protection. This could shield a spacecraft from particulate radiation, including otherwise hard to stop neutrons. However, there's also the frictionless aspect. Imagine evacuated transport tubes, filled with spherical vehicles with copper repellers on the outside to keep them centered and apart from each other. No friction, no air drag. No hard collisions, either. 

Doc keeps describing the effect of the X-plosive bullets in ways which seem to indicate that it doesn't involve the emission of any radiation, including heat. (He mentions flame at least once, but that could be shock-induced combustion or simple incandescent heat from friction.) This leads me to believe they work by using the repulsive effect. Just drive a small sphere of treated copper to disruption and you get a sharp, hard shock, shoving outwards, like the wave of an explosion. The interesting descriptions of the "nothing" created in the center of these blasts implies that it's all repulsion. 

Finally, we have energy generation. The fantastic thing here is not just the amount, but the concentration. With the conductors to handle it, you could have a multi-megawatt power plant in a foot locker. This is not outrageous, since nuclear reactors for ramjets and rockets have generated over half a gigawatt of heat energy in objects the size of large desks. The trick is converting that heat into something useable. With the copper technology you can liberate the energy of the mass as whatever form of energy you want.

Keep in mind that you can presumably generate any energy with this technology. Electricity. Heat. UV. In Skylark Three the crew meet people who have had copper energy for a long while, and who have hand weapons which utilize the direct liberation effect to create destructive beams. (This could actually meet my goal of having a flashlight with a perceptible recoil! :-)

The attractive effect actually seems to be the most flexible. There are plenty of potential uses which this effect would improve or make possible. As one example, an atomic force microscope uses a very fine conductive needle to map the positions of individual atoms. It can even pick up atoms and move them around. A few years back one was used to spell IBM in letters only a few atoms high. 

Imagine if you could do that at a distance with fine needles of activated copper. Now, imagine three arrays of thousands of such needles, arranged as the three sides of a half cube, with piezoelectric actuators minutely steering the needles, picking up and placing individual atoms. Building things. Additive manufacturing at its purest. (This method of construction is actually explored in Skylark Three and the later books.)

There might even be a way to record the "set" of an attractor, rather than keeping the power on all the time. Among other functions, you could generalize and use this to find and pull on whatever material you wanted. Just tune your attractor to gold, and fly a close grid pattern over international waters. 

Better yet, tune it to X (Seaton's name for the copper conversion catalyst) and sweep the planet - maybe the entire Solar System - to make sure you keep your monopoly. I mean, you don't really want this stuff in unsupervised hands, right? (Too much chance of a really big BOOM!)

Doc Smith may have invented space opera with The Skylark of Space, though that is argued. What is not argued is that he wrote one of the first SF stories to realistically deal with the problems of weightlessness, space suits and interstellar distances, the latter including the emptiness between stars. He described the idea of a massive "dark star" only a few years after the concept was though of by a physicist. Something which today we'd call a black hole, though the one in the book has no accretion disk. In that first story the travelers encountered this something like five thousand light years from Earth. Doc speculated on the chemistry of life, the horrors of addiction and the rapaciousness of unrestrained big business. He - as someone who lived through the horrors of the Great War, though as a civilian - described total warfare based on "race." He speculated on radio controlled flying bombs and electromagnetically driven projectiles, the energy stored in electrical charges suddenly released and used for explosive effect (think of LiOn batteries shorting, only the energy is released much more quickly) organisms of pure intelligence, and on and on. (The story is actually crowded with Big Concepts.) He even included martial arts (referred to as jujitsu) on the part of Crane's servant, Shiro. He may not have been the first published writer to mention any of those, but he made them feel real and put his own, unique stamp on those concepts and more, all in that one story.

Now, here's some fun speculation. What if it turns out that the first part of The Skylark of Space was based on actual events, which Doc Smith heard about second- or third-hand, and then extrapolated on for a work of fiction? The original explorers - due to a flaw in their spacecraft design - never returned from their first test flight. The families, overcome by grief, sealed off the lab and left it. Then, a century later (about now) after everyone who knew of the experiments was long dead and the details were long forgotten, the property was sold. The new owner began inventorying their acquisition, and someone realized just what they had in that old lab. 

Get to Mars in bit over a day, anyone? :-) Let's all go Skylarking!