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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Stellar Analog Computers | ||
| Special systems used to calculate safe "jumps" for interstellar trips. |
| Even the senior officer, on a Navy Transport, would never have to jump
“blind,” except in the rare and nearly unheard-of instance of an analog failure ; only tramps and Navy Scouts ever jumped willingly on anything but
a ’log-computed course. The stellar analog computers were the Navy’s
Topmost Secret; when you used one, nothing was required except to make
sure the jump-along itself was in perfect condition, and then to pull the
switch. The ’log did the rest.
Merchant ships carried ’logs for their chartered ports of call — the Lady had two — but the charter ports were the smallest part of a merchant trip. The number of destinations for which Navy analogs were available was hardly a hatful out of the galaxies. Without a ’log to point the way for him, it was up to the IBMan to plot co-ordinates for where a hole ought to be. With luck and skill he could bring the ship out into normal space again somewhere within SolNav reach of the destination. With the tiniest error in computation, a ship might be lost forever in some distant universe with no stars to steer her home. |
| Technovelgy from The Lady Was A Tramp,
by Rose Sharon. Published by Venture Science Fiction in 1957 Additional resources -
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'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
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'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
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'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
