Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:15:06 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Take that Darth Vader, thwack! , was  Sith
  andbefore

At 03:03 PM 6/16/05 -0400, Michael Walsh wrote:

>In James White's novel "All Judgment Fled" there are two refitted
>Apollo capsules sent out to Mars to investigate a Very Large Object.  He
>did a very effective job of getting across the near claustophobia of
>this months long journey.  Imagine being seated next to two other people
>for months... and nowhere to go.

"Near" claustrophobia?!?  Sorry, I think you'd have to drug any normal
human nearly comatose to let them survive a trip like that.  There's less
room in an Apollo capsule than in the average family car...and I've *been*
stuck in the back seat of a VW bug with two other people (my brother and
sister) for a long cross-country trip (Niagara Falls from Va. Beach, then
up through Canada and back down through NY with a stop-off to visit
relatives.  Only took a few days, but we were about ready to riot by the
time we got home...

Unless the "refit" involved adding a seriously large "stores module",
there's no way an Apollo capsule would make a months long trip with a crew,
even if they didn't kill each other...recycling only takes you just so far
and then you have to make up the losses from somewhere, and the capsule
wasn't designed for storage, just re-entry.  Even a full command module
wouldn't have enough storage for the air, water and food needed.

Talk about unbelievable "science" in your fiction...  ;-)

-- Mike B.
--
"Nobody ever goes there, it's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra