{"id":31123,"date":"2015-04-25T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T09:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31123"},"modified":"2015-04-24T21:35:27","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T01:35:27","slug":"theres-a-reason-sf-writers-tend-to-invent-ways-to-travel-interstellar-distances-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/04\/25\/theres-a-reason-sf-writers-tend-to-invent-ways-to-travel-interstellar-distances-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s a reason SF writers tend to invent ways to travel interstellar distances quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>Real Clear Science<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realclearscience.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/interstellar_trade_would_be_a_nightmare_for_the_irs.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ross Pomeroy<\/a> sings the praises of an early publication by the pre-Nobel academic Paul Krugman:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a respected professor at Princeton University, and an outspoken liberal columnist for the <em>New York Times<\/em>. But first and foremost, he is a huge nerd, and proud of it.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the sweltering summer of 1978, Krugman&#8217;s geekiness prompted him to tackle a matter of galactic importance: the economics of interstellar trade. Then a 25-year-old &#8220;oppressed&#8221; assistant professor at Yale &#8220;caught up in the academic rat race,&#8221; Krugman crafted his &#8220;Theory of Interstellar Trade&#8221; to cheer himself up. Krugman&#8217;s jocularity is evident throughout the paper, which was published online in 2010, thirty-two years after he stamped it out on a typewriter. Early on in the article, he even pokes fun at his chosen profession:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>&#8220;While the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis actually does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The key problem with interstellar trade, Krugman writes, is time dilation. When objects travel at velocities approaching the speed of light &mdash; roughly 300,000 kilometers per second &mdash; time moves more slowly for them compared to objects at rest. (For a great explainer of this effect, which is tied to Einstein&#8217;s theory of special relativity, check out this video.) So the crew of a space-faring cargo ship might experience only ten years while thirty years or more might pass for the denizens of the planets they&#8217;re traveling between. How then, does one calculate interest rates on the cost of goods sold? Trading partners will undoubtedly be many light-years apart and trips will last decades, so this is a vital issue to resolve.<\/p>\n<p>Since the speeds of vessels will undoubtedly vary, but both planets should be moving through space at close enough velocities where time dilation wouldn&#8217;t be a factor, Krugman contends that the interest costs should be tabulated based on the time shared by the two planets. But what about those interest rates? Won&#8217;t they differ? Not necessarily, Krugman argues. Competition should lead them to equalize amongst interplanetary trading partners.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Real Clear Science, Ross Pomeroy sings the praises of an early publication by the pre-Nobel academic Paul Krugman: Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a respected professor at Princeton University, and an outspoken liberal columnist for the New York Times. But first and foremost, he is a huge nerd, and proud of it. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,16,44,15],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-31123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-science","category-space-science","category-technology","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-85Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31124,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31123\/revisions\/31124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}