The speed of light and discovering

[Alex K]

I'll answer the OP in a minute, but something else - I think it's an intriguing question how interpersonal relationships would be affected by a 14 or 20 minute time gap. I imagine some friend or family member, maybe the wife or me being on a mission to mars for a couple of years or so. Would our conversations end up being like email or letters, containing a largely self-contained block of stuff, which gets answered by another largely self-contained block of stuff, or would it be more like a really slow conversation? Would people develop a strange kind of communication mode in which they find a rhythm where one person speaks, and when the recipient receives one of your pauses, gives the answer, thus having several conversations interspliced with time delays? I think this is a really interesting thing to explore for a fiction writer, too.