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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Gyroscope Seats | ||
| Your best bet for remaining at the right angle to the force of acceleration. |
| The machine is very nearly complete now. All we need are the seats - they are to be air-inflated gyroscopically controlled seats, to make it impossible for a sudden twist of the ship to put the strain in the wrong direction...
"Captain Mason," Arcot explained to the Air Inspector, "these seats may be a bit more active than one generally expects a seat to be..." "You'll notice that my controls and the instruments are mounted on the arm of the chair really; that permits me to maintain complete control of the ship at all times, and still permits my chair to remain perpendicular to the forces. The gyroscopes in the base here cause the entire chair to remain stable if the ship rolls, but the chair can continue to revolve around this bearing here so that we will not be forced out of our seats." |
| Technovelgy from The Black Star Passes,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Take a look at these other sfnal chairs we'd all like to sit in: the spacecraft ejection seat from Murray Leinster's 1953 novel Space Tug, the pod-chair from Jack Vance's 1954 novel The Houses of Iszm and the suspensor chairs from Frank Herbert's Dune
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Black Star Passes
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to The Black Star Passes
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
Gyroscope Seats-related
news articles:
- Bose Ride System Smooths Your Ride
| Warp Drive Tech Back On The Menu |
| JAXA Int Ball 2 Coming Right Along As Star Wars Remote |
| Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now |
| Denmark Joins The 'Zero Debris Charter' To Clean Up Space |
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'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
