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"I'm strictly an ivory-tower person. I can explain things but I can't do things."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Cosmo-Craft | ||
| A spacecraft for traveling through time and space. |
| Occupying almost the entire floor
of the shed was a long, torpedolike object of silvery and' symmetric beauty. It flashed and shone even in the artificial light. “Pretty, isn’t she? I’ve named her the Ellen** said Web proudly. “She took a year and a half to build. But step inside and I’ll show you something else.” He pressed a spot on the torpedo’s side. A door swung outward, letting them into a narrow corridor. Web opened a second door and they stood inside.
 ('A Race Through Time' by Donald Wandrei) “Double-walled against friction-heat and accident,” he said, as if that explained everything. He next proceeded to point out all the internal features, and how every inch of space had its purpose. Cushioned walls, oxygen apparatus, food and water storerooms, dial-board and cosmic ray-telepathic mirror, power chambers and sleeping bunks for two — an amazing total for so small a space, and yet nothing except essentials. “Why, it’s a thing of beauty in every detail !” cried Ellen... WEB WENT ahead with his preparations and began stocking his cosmo-craft with everything he would need, and a few extras that might be of value. |
| Technovelgy from A Race Through Time,
by Donald Wandrei. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1933 Additional resources -
|
Why build such a craft?
‘T’m going out to the abysses beyond our known universe, to the great nebulae that lie at the limit of our most powerful telescopes, and the black voids, and the deeps that continue forever and ever — out to the eternal and infinite cosmos whose nature we don’t know. Light never traveled as fast as I’ll travel — a million miles a second and more, a billion miles, maybe. Think of it, Ellen, a billion miles in a second! Past the Moon and Venus and Mars and Jupiter and Saturn in one short second! Astronomical distances? They’ll mean nothing to me! Barring accidents, I can accelerate my speed to rates I hardly even dare guess at, but I’ve figured them out, and they’re frightening.”
“But I built this boat for a bigger purpose than just traveling from here to the Moon or Mars or Venus, Ellen. I built it for the biggest purpose possible — to conquer time and space together. I’m going out, far out in space, beyond the solar system, into the void, and on through the galactic universe. I’m going farther than that, Ellen, where few men have dared even to think of going.” A light burned in his eyes, the light of the adventurer, the daredevil, the dreamer who has faith because he bases his dreams on facts.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
