Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Latest By
Category:


Armor
Artificial Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work

"The only real way to maintain privacy is to be uninteresting. It may be that privacy is a passing fad."
- Larry Niven

Asymptotic Drive  
  A propulsion drive that used a tiny black hole to generate energy.  

"D'you see that pipe? said the engineer. "The small red one?... That's the main hydrogen feed.. All of a hundred grams a second. Say eight tons a day, under full thrust.":

They were now hovering beside a massive - yet still surprisingly small - cylinder that might have been the barrel of a twentieth-century naval gun. So this was the reaction chamber of the Drive...

Near the middle of the five-meter-long tube a small section of the casing had been removed, like the door of some miniature bank vault, and replaced by a crystal window... a microscope... was aimed into the interior of the drive unit.

Duncan floated to the eyepiece and fastened himself rather clumsily in place.

"Look at the crossover at the exact center," said his guide.

Duncan obeyed... then he realized that a tiny bulge was creeping along the hairline as he tracked the microscope. It was as if he was looking at the reticule through a sheet of glass with one minute bubble or imperfection in it.

[It's] like a pinhead-sized lens. Without the grid, you'd never see it."

"Pinhead-sized! That's an exaggeration if ever I heard one. The node's smaller than an atomic nucleus. You're not actually seeing it, of course - only the distortion it produces."

"And yet there are thousands of tons of matter in there."

"It's made a dozen trips and is getting near saturation, so we'll soon have to install a new one. Of course it would go on absorbing hydrogen as long as we fed it, but we can't drag too much unnecessary mass around... Like the old seagoing ships - they used to get covered in barnacles, and slowed down if they weren't scraped clean every so often.

Technovelgy from Imperial Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke.
Published by Harcourt Brace in 1976
Additional resources -

Compare to the manmade black hole described in One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson.

Compare to these propulsion systems: Light Pressure Propulsion (1867), apergy (1880), Beam-Powered Propulsion (1931), Granton motor (1933), Vibration-Propelled Cruiser (1928), geodynes (1936), ion drive (1947), Planetary Propulsion-Blasts (1934), stardrive (1953), solar sail (light sail) (1962), Lyle drive (1961), laser cannon (1966), Bussard ramjet (1976), asymptotic drive (1976), Interstellar Laser Propulsion System (1985).

Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |

Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Imperial Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
  Tech news articles related to Imperial Earth
  Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke

Asymptotic Drive-related news articles:
  - Are Black Hole Starships Possible?

Articles related to Space Tech
Solar X-Flares Disrupt North American Radio And Navigation
Restructure An Asteroid, Spin It, Get A 'Space Habitat' With Gravity?
Quadruple-Star System Now Forming
Nuclear Rockets To Fly In Space!

Want to Contribute an Item? It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add it here.

<Previous
Next>

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

 

 

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Science Fiction in the News

Barista Robot Perfects Latte Swirl With Multi-DOF Wriggle
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'

Vendetta 2023 All-Terrain Skateboard Could Use Neal Stephenson's Smartwheels
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'

Safe Street Rebel Autonomous Vehicle Luddites And Schachner's 1931 Robot-Deranger
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'

The Electric Balance Bicycle And The Decline Of Western Civilization
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'

'Droplet' Battery Microscale Power Pack
'...a power pack the size of a pea.'

ARX-5 Doing Robot Arm Dancing
It's Data's day - at last.

CD, DVD Bit Rot And PKD's Civic Notification Distorter
'...copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one.'

Inbiodroid Prometheus 2.0 Telepresence Avatar Robot
My prize robot, tall, dashing would speak and act for me...

Amazon One Is Frank Herbert's Palm Lock
'A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines.'

DroneDog Ground Security Robot Dogs From Asylon
'I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog.'

More SF in the News

More Beyond Technovelgy

Home | Glossary | Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.