Ways to lose a spaceship II

And of course, asteroids, fire, navigation, and boredom (and numerous other methods of achieving doom) are all related to the overarching problem: time.

Time is a slippery creature, just when you think you have her nailed down, off she goes in a direction you didn't expect. You can't escape her, but she can lose you. You can focus on her for as long as you want, but no human being has the capacity to focus forever, and somewhere in your inattentive moments, you're surprised to discover she's gone again. 

Time is hard to talk about, think about, live in, work with, and even observe sometimes. Time, every time, and wends her way as she wishes and what can any of us do about it?

For everyone mortal, she is your indifferent companion to death. As soon as we arrive in the universe, she is already conducting us out of it, in her own way, at her own pace. 

Not everyone has the same time, even if they are in the same apparent space.

But, and this is the true miracle of space flight, as indifferent as she is to you (and ever will be), you can synchronize yourself to her. 

A chronometric compass, a hyper-sleep chamber, and a decent graviton collector and storage unit can fix a multitude of space-faring sins. The magic of space travel isn't distance after all; it's the time you spend getting there.

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