First up, I did enjoy 3 Body Problem and recommend it.
But there's one glaringly obvious issue that I can't seem to find an answer to or comment on: the Staircase.
The whole idea of the Staircase is to get the probe to 1% light speed, travelling through space faster than we can otherwise make it by using nuclear bombs along the way.
This makes perfect sense if the nuclear bombs were already in space, but they're not. So they have to be got there first, which is going to take as long as it would the issue they're trying to overcome, negating the entire project.
Or are the nukes close enough to earth to negate this?
Am I missing something here? Does anyone have a rational explanation of this?
But there's one glaringly obvious issue that I can't seem to find an answer to or comment on: the Staircase.
The whole idea of the Staircase is to get the probe to 1% light speed, travelling through space faster than we can otherwise make it by using nuclear bombs along the way.
This makes perfect sense if the nuclear bombs were already in space, but they're not. So they have to be got there first, which is going to take as long as it would the issue they're trying to overcome, negating the entire project.
Or are the nukes close enough to earth to negate this?
Am I missing something here? Does anyone have a rational explanation of this?