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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
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| Metal Solvent Ray Thrower | ||
| Acts like a flame thrower in space. |
He has an unexpected use for this device.
| Here was something: A metal solvent ray thrower, big and powerful enough for his purposes. It was as large as a small cannon, but easy to handle without the gravity pull that the ship once had...
Away he soared into the starry blackness, floating outward like a kite. He traveled for many yards, until he came to the end of the cable with ever so gentle a jerk... He pointed the ray thrower in the direction that the wreck was traveling in and touched the trigger switch. Fire gushed into the dark, fire full of destructive power - and motive power. Like a rocket, the thrower recoiled and hurled backward.
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| Technovelgy from Lost Rocket,
by Manly Wade Wellman. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
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Compare to the emergency repulsion ray from Earth-Venus 12 (1936) by Gabriel Wilson, the reaction pistol from Gordon A. Giles Diamond Planetoid (1937), the propulsion gun from Venus Mines, Incorporated (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the Pistol 'Rocket' (1931) from Buck Rogers: 2430 AD (1931) by Nowlan and Calkin.
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| Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside? |
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
