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"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Lyle Drive | ||
| Propulsion system for use inside the solar system. |
| The Federation Ship Champion, manned by an all-male crew of eighteen experienced spacemen and carrying more than that number of male pioneers, made the crossing under Lyle Drive in only nineteen days. The Champion landed just south of Lacus Soli, as Captain van Tromp intended to search for the Envoy. |
| From Stranger in a Strange Land,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Putnam in 1961 Additional resources -
|
Heinlein does not provide a description of how this propulsion system works; however, he compares it to the method still in use today:
At that time, only eight Terran years after the founding of the first human colony on Luna, any interplanetary trip made by humans necessarily had to be made in weary free-fail orbits, doubly tangent semi-ellipses--from Terra to Mars, two hundred fifty-eight days, the same for the return journey, plus four hundred fifty-five days waiting at Mars while the two planets crawled slowly back into relative positions which would permit shaping the doubly-tangent orbit-a total of almost three Earth years.
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Lyle Drive-related
news articles:
- 30-Day Trip To Mars?
| Revisiting A Cloud City On Venus |
| 'Windowless Cockpit' Like Star Trek's Patent Applied For |
| NASA's Warp Speed Starship Design |
| ForceShoes, NASA's Exercise Sandals For Astronauts |
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It's time we started to get rid of that distinction between metal and flesh, and IC and neuron, don't you think?
'...a wide sheet of clear material suddenly flared with light and swirling color.'
'Transmitting to its manipulator, far away now, all that it heard through its ear microphones...'
'I had a small can of powdered alcohol disguised as tooth powder...'
'The jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers)...'
'It cut her out of the stream of vehicles and reduced the speed of her car...'
