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"There was a time when one old eccentric guy with a notebook could do something important to science. Now even the resources of a major university are often not enough."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Energy Converter | ||
| Massive unit on the sunside of Mercury converts heat into energy, and beams it around the solar system. |
| "Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sun power, you know, and on Mercury's Sunside, sunpower is something. That's why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It's really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process." |
| Technovelgy from Runaround,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Street and Smith in 1942 Additional resources -
|
The energy is beamed around the solar system; this is described more fully in succeeding stories the I, Robot series.
Compare to the Near-Space Solar Energy Collectors from Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker. and the solar energy beam from Masquerade by Clifford Simak.
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| Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin' |
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'Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere.'
'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
