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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Gravity Whip | ||
| A roller coaster designe to provide riders with a 'zero G' experience. |
If you think that roller coasters are extreme now, just wait.
| Snakelike and faroff around the edge of the Park the Gravity Whip coiled, offering a total of thirty seconds of weightlessness via computer-designed parabolic arcs. |
| Technovelgy from Dream Park,
by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes). Published by Ace Books in 1981 Additional resources -
|
Here's a bit more for today's zero G roller coaster designers to think about:
"...We're going to rework the Whip for total Environment. Redesign the cars, add opticals, sound, texture. We've got a dozen scripts waiting for the special effects program. Think of an 'Alice in Wonderland' where the customer really falls down the rabbit hole, or a space trip where your gravity goes out at selected moments... We're working on ways to stretch that thirty seconds of free-fall time, psychologically."
Like extreme coasters? See this article on RoboCoaster G2 - Extreme Robot Roller Coaster.
Thanks to Erik Glenn for suggesting this item.
"Why redo the Whip? It's still pulling 'em in."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Dream Park
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes)
Tech news articles related to Dream Park
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes)
Gravity Whip-related
news articles:
- Zero Gravity Roller Coaster Coming
| 'Iceberg House' Of Travis Kelce Reflects Science Fiction Of Past Century |
| Lucid Dreams On Demand From Prophetic and Card79 |
| Flyboard Water Jet Shoes Lift Off |
| Cosplay Style Wings Could Work On Moon |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
