Tau Zero Report

The book is about a colonization “Bussard ramjet", named Leonora Christine with 50 colonists on-board put in space by the world with a mission to colonize a star. The crew aims at travelling to a planet thirty light years away; however with the ship set to travel at a speed close to speed of light, they hope to take just a few years thanks to relativity and time dilation.
- The book includes physics, chemistry and engineering. Based on relativity, high ship speed and passage of time. Inter-relation between gas atoms, ship speed and passage of time is the main subject. The space ship is built to accelerate during the first 2.5 years and decelerate the last 2.5 years.
- Inaccuracies-Movement in the ship is by having a magical gravity system which is not plausible; movement when repairing the ship outside is on zero gravity, rather a gravitational field should have been created in the ship.
When the braking system fails they make a theory that by accelerating through the hydrogen centre of the Milky Way they can land at a place where gas atoms are sparse enabling them repair the ship. By this theory, the ship would gain mass, speed and suck in entire galaxies.
- A ‘Bussard ramjet’ is used as a form of travel- Hydrogen collected from space is compressed until nuclear fusion occurs powering the jets engine. However, the ships speed is limited to the speed of light which it cannot exceed.
- The ship could have taken 33 light years (earth years), but 5 years in the ship due to time dilation, which finally was impossible due to failure of the braking system because deceleration was not possible.
- The mode of travel does make sense to me since on earth gravity holds things down but in space gravity is zero so with the acceleration offered by the ship it is possible to accelerate to almost the speed of light hence cause time dilation. By law of physics, the theory of tau is real so approaching speed of light is possible for space ships; however in the text the law describes distortion of length, time and mass.
- The book is about colonization of a star, the political environment on earth by the countries giving Sweden the power to oversee the disarmament. The book presents the human relation of the people on board the ship with conflicts symbolizing the society at hand and their desperation comparing it to the Scandinavian poetry.
The book is a good example of science fiction of its time; the author understands laws of science and well manipulates our minds to science fiction by having the ship maneuver various handles, time dilation and cosmos nature with an aim to reach the possible habitable planet.