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"I never saw why I had to give up science in order to write, or the other way around, so I didn't!"
- Gregory Benford
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| Sounding Projectile | ||
| Provides a way to tell whether there’s a soldid surface on a cloudy planet. |
In the 1930's, little was known (or correctly inferred) about the planets. Obviously, Saturn is intensely cloudy. But can you find a solid surface?
| His hands clutched a switch. A slight movement shot a sounding projectile from a point on the undersurface of his craft. It darted down, and in a few seconds burst into a clouded patch of incandescence. That meant that it had struck something firm enough to discharge its percussion cap. |
| Technovelgy from Mad Robot,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
|
See the article on Impactor Determines Composition from The Mechanical Monarch (1958) by E.C. Tubb.
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| Starship Special Edition For Lunar Shuttle |
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| Project Hyperion - Generation Ship Designers Needed! |
| Marslink Proposed By SpaceX |
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
