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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Beanstalk | ||
| Clever name for the space elevator. |
| As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule he was right on my heels. He followed me through the door leading to Customs, Health and Immigration. As the door contracted behind him I killed him.
I have never liked riding the Beanstalk. My distaste was full-blown even before the disaster to the Quito Skyhook. A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic. But the only other way to reach Ell-Five takes too long and costs too much; my orders and expense acount did not cover it. |
| Technovelgy from Friday,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Holt, Rhinehart and Winston in 1982 Additional resources -
|
Readers will recognize the idea of a space elevator or orbital tower, popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in his excellent 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise. The basic idea was first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895 (after seeing the Eiffel Tower).
Thanks to Nebula Nox for pointing out this item.
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'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
'... he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot.'
