an odd sci-fi peeve of mine

[cmdr_zoom]

I dislike stories in which the reason for sending out an interstellar colony ship is that some calamity (often an asteroid strike or something similar) is going to wipe out life on Earth. Because the stars are so far away, and the resources/effort required to reach them is so ridiculously high, in any scenario in which the entire solar system is not affected (say, by the Sun going nova), it will always be more efficient and productive to instead send ships (plural) to the Moon, or Mars, or even the asteroid belt or outer system. An interstellar ark is truly the very last resort, when absolutely no other option exists, and IMO most authors are lazy in establishing its necessity - resorting to cheap handwaves, or not addressing it at all.

Comments

[caluche.livejournal.com]

I don't actually remember a story in which this wasn't set up, though admittedly only Songs of Distant Earth comes to mind immediately. it's as much of a peeve to me that the various science fiction authors, even when they do seem to try to explain the death of the solar system, then make use of a magical technology which sometimes provides infinite energy yet the optimal solution seems to remain to build a giant space ark. my age has made me a little jaded. We're never leaving Earth - this planet is all we have and even Mars is too much work and beyond our engineering capacity to do much more than visit. at least for the next thousand years or so.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Even if the sun *did* go nova, it would still make more sense to shelter in place deep in one of the outer planet moons than try to go interstellar. If you have the ability to provide heat, food, et al for a multidecade or multicentury journey, you have the ability to do the same thing with much less effort in-system, and you'd have far more resources available both before and after nova.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Besides, the Sun can't actually do that. Singleton stars don't have nova events (they're a consequence of binary star interactions), and the Sun isn't massive enough to go supernova at the end of its life; it'll just get really, inconveniently huge for a while and then go out.