Interplanetary travel : cluster analysis of inspec classification codes to identify main subject areas

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONIn early years of space exploration, Dwight D. Eisenhower's President's Science Advisory Committee (1958) referred to the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. Interplanetary travel is a topic of interest both in scientific community as well as in science fiction literature. Evidence shows that throughout all of known history, humans have studied and interpreted sky and struggled to understand mysteries of cosmos (Fix, 2004). The stories and beliefs from early mythological and astrological ideas have evolved into serious scientific and technological fields. The remarkable level of precision and quality of today's instruments and data analysis is contributing to better insights into universe, and alteration or confirmation of theoretical foundations. Hence this paper is based on scientific and technological literature that represents these advances. At same time, science fiction has also been prospering side by side with this extraordinary new knowledge creation. In this paper, we are concerned with knowledge domains in interplanetary travel, on which a major part of science fiction literature is founded.This is not a critical analysis or a comprehensive review of subject. Rather, it is a descriptive exposition based on results obtained using Inspec database. Although limited in its scope, results show interesting information about components of interplanetary travel. In addition, similar works have been published with intent of presenting basic information about a scientific subject aimed at librarians, instructors, and students, such as works of Stankus (2014) on biofuels, Kulp (2014) on genomics, Jarrett (2014) on Ebola virus, Delwiche (2016) on Zika virus, and Tran (2016) on particle detectors. Furthermore, a substantial portion of science fiction is based on scientific knowledge; we are not comparing or analyzing real scientific knowledge with popular ideas. A better understanding of real knowledge can be of benefit to science fiction followers.A second motivation for selection of this topic is recent work done by researchers such as E. W. Davis (2006 and 2012) of Institute for Advanced Studies, Austin, TX; by J. C. Garcia-Escartin and P. Chamorro-Posada (2013) from Universidad de Valladolid, Departamento de Teoria de la Senal y Comunicaciones e Ingenieria Telematica; and work of P. Lubin (2016) of University of California, Santa Barbara, Experimental Cosmology Group. These recent contributions are important to this topic because authors using scientific formal communication (papers published in well-recognized proceedings and journals) present specific arguments that make extraordinary long-distance space travel a realistic event in future. There are many other scientists with remarkable theories about possibilities of exploring universe but not necessarily human or robots in spaceships. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope mission is an example of a project that has renewed interest in study of universe.In his first article, Davis (2008) explores faster-than-light (FTL) technological details, analyzes tentative solutions, and concludes that transversable wormholes are better suited for traveling in space since less negative energy is necessary as compared to warp drives. The need for developing a source of negative energy at large scale in space is presented, and concerns for controlling lab environment for negative energy experimentation is discussed. The second article by Davis (2012) presents technical problems to be resolved in order for FTL space warps to be possible, such as production of large-scale negative energy, creation of guidance, manipulation, and control principles, development of a program of space warps computer simulation, and a number of other fundamental theoretical issues. …