Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!
PHOTO PROMPT © DAVID STEWART
Reaching for the stars
It’s a long way to the stars. Even the nearest is more than 23,000,000,000,000 miles away. Out of reach?
They fired the rocket towards the sun, tracking it meticulously. It gained speed like a slingshot as gravity swung it round the blazing orb.
In Mission Control, student John Batchelor and the other scientists heard the AI announce, “Satellites deployed”. They cheered when the monitor showed an armada of craft, their sails stealing momentum from the sun’s light, each bound starwards.
Many years later, silver-haired Professor Batchelor watched enrapt as the craft beamed back their first image from an alien sun.
Autumn Leaves 
A spacy intriguing story, well done, Penny.
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Thank you for your comment, Mason. This scenario is on the verge of possibility.
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Yes it sure is. If Mr Musk can make everything work we’ll be able to travel anywhere.
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Or, at least, an image of what the alien sun had once been
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Thank you for commenting, Neil. As you say, an image of what the alien sun had once been some four years earlier. And isn’t that the way of all our knowledge? Even if you and I were talking face to face, photons scattered from you would take a finite time to reach me, and a substantially longer time to become a sequence of neurons firing, and even longer for me to compare that sequence with previous experience…
Isn’t the human brain incredible?
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Also, I don’t really see you or hear you. What I see and hear is a model my brain has made of you
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Absolutely!
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An epic voyage in 100 words. Well done Penny.
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Thank you for your kind comment, Iain. It will indeed be an epic voyage when it happens!
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Yep, I think it is being planned. I hope, at least!
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Thank you for your kind comment, Trent. It will be exciting, although I would be highly unlikely to live long enough to see the results of the quest!
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Same here, I hope I am here to see the start, but doubt if I will be to see the conclusion…
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Mind-blowing! What a good story.
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Thank you for your very kind comment. Contemporary science is mind-blowing across every field of knowledge, isn’t it?
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Wow! It’s always something where a prompt can lead. It led you very far away! And back again in 100 words!
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Thank you for your kind comment. It’s likely that the first expedition to our nearest star will look a little like this.
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I like where your muse took you with this one, Penny.
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Thank you for your kind comment, Jade.
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You’re welcome 🙂
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Cool! Now “they” know we exist, if “they” are out there… 🙂
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And we’ve just slung a thousand tiny spy drones in their direction…EEK!
Thank you for your fun comment, Ali!
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Dear Penny,
I love the way you brought the story full circle in Batchelor’s lifetime. A novel in 100 words.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Bringing the story full circle in Batchelor’s lifetime was a way of emphasising just how distant the stars are – he’s gone from young to old in the time it’s taken the satellites to reach the nearest star. It also shows just how ambitious we can be in planning our journeys of discovery.
Shalom
Penny
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I love happy endings 😀
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Thank you for your supportive comment. I like happy endings, too!
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How satisfying that must be for Professor B! Nice one Penny.
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The cherry on the cake of a distinguished career! Thank you for your kind comment, Keith.
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i’m glad he lived to see it for himself. 🙂
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Thank you for your kind comment, Plaridel. I, too, am glad that he lived to see it for himself. Among other things, it implies that our technological civilisation is still flourishing – a state of affairs that is by no means guaranteed…
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Such a big story in so few words. I liked that Batchelor saw it from the beginning to the end. Great piece of sic-fi, Penny!
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Brenda.
Bringing the story full circle in Batchelor’s lifetime was a way of emphasising just how distant the stars are – he’s gone from young to old in the time it’s taken the satellites to reach the nearest star. It also implies that our technological civilisation is still flourishing – a state of affairs that is by no means guaranteed…
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I was a teen when the voyager probes were launched. And now I’m getting old and they’ve ony recently left the solar system. It’s time that we get better drives. A great story, Penny. It fires the imagination on so many levels.
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Thank you for such a nice comment, Gabi. I’m a bit older than you (erm, I remember Sputnik launching…) and I don’t suppose we’ll despatch the star mission in my lifetime. But it’s still thrilling. You mention better drives. There are at least two under development. One is to use nuclear power to expel ionised gas at very high speeds. This has the same limitation as chemical propellants, in that eventually you run out of gas to ionise – but it takes longer and the gas is expelled at a higher exhaust velocity. The other is solar sails, where light pressure from the sun’s light accelerates the spacecraft. The acceleration is modest, but it goes on and on and on. I believe they hope to reach a significant fraction of lightspeed eventually, which is where my story starts.
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Oh! How wonderful he lived long enough to see the results! Love this, Penny
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Thank you for your lovely empathic comment, Dale. I’m so glad you picked up on the human dimension; the technology is fun, but it’s the questing human spirit that really inspires me.
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I am so glad I did! And I am, as well
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How vast the universe is! Yet we receive so much in return for the labor of exploring it, as Batchelor does.
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Dora.
Yes, the universe is truly vast – way beyond anything we can properly imagine. I find it wonderful that we can infer so much about its nature from the limited measurements we can make. It’s astonishing how consistent it is.
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Very inventive story, Penny. Well done.
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Thank you for the kind comment, Sandra. I struggled with the prompt this week and, I must confess, the story is just a fictionalised account of one of Nasa’s more exciting proposed missions!
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I really like this one, Penny. It has a feel of authenticity about it. Think what it would be like!
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Thank you for your kind comment, Linda. I’m glad it felt authentic. Space exploration has always excited me.
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Yes, me too. I loved teaching earth science years ago because there was always a large unit on astronomy 🙂
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🙂 Nice to meet another enthusiast!
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After more than 40 years the Voyager is now in interstellar space. No doubt in the future they will find a way to cut that time down and your fiction will become reality.
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Thank you for the thoughtful comment. The solar sails described in the story are already under development and I believe they are expected to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light.
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