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"The permanent government now is the anchorpeople. They don't get elected, and year after year they're responding emotionally to this or that."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Launching Laser | ||
| A set of very high-powered lasers used to power spacecraft. |
| Jerome Finney... showed that the spectrum was the light of our own sun, drastically blue-shifted. Some kind of mirror was coming at us, moving at a hell of a clip, but slowing as it came.
"That would mean a light-sail!" "Why the big deal, Frazer? I thought you already knew." "No. This is the first I've heard of it. I don't read the Sunday supplements." Morris was exasperated. "But you knew enough to call a laser cannon a launching laser!" |
| Technovelgy from The Fourth Profession,
by Larry Niven. Published by Quark in 1971 Additional resources -
|
Interested readers should also see the entry for laser cannon from Niven and Pournelle's 1974 novel Mote in God's Eye.
The idea of using light pressure to move a spaceship has been around for a long time; it was suggested by Jules Verne in his 1867 novel From the Earth to the Moon; see the entry for light pressure propulsion. The method was explicitly described by Edmond Hamilton in his 1929 short story The Comet Doom; see the entry for ship propelled by light pressure.
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
