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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Meteor Miner | ||
| Someone who roams the solar system, hunting for metal in meteors. |
First use of this helpful phrase.
| The officers of interplanetary
liners lose no love upon the meteor miners, claiming that their
collected masses of metal, almost helpless, always underpowered, are
menaces to navigation.
 (Meteor Miner from Salvage in Space) |
| Technovelgy from Salvage in Space,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding Stories in 1933 Additional resources -
|
In today's parlance, a meteoroid is a small asteroid, less than a meter in diameter. You'd call it a meteor if it entered the atmosphere and a meteorite if you found it on the ground.
See the first reference to asteroid mining from Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) by Garrett P. Serviss.
Compare to asteroid mining (blasting) from Asteroid of Gold (1932) by Clifford Simak, the luminous stake markers from The Radium World (1932) by Frank K. Kelly,
asteroid claim law from Jurisdiction (1941) by Nat Schachner,
space placers from The Day We Celebrate (1941) by Nelson S. Bond, the
asteroid mining robot from Catch That Rabbit (1944) by Isaac Asimov, the
asteroid mine from Love Among the Robots (1946) by Emmett McDowell, the coal mole from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield, and
asteroid metal from The Mechanical Monarch (1958) by E.C. Tubb.
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Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
| Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now |
| Denmark Joins The 'Zero Debris Charter' To Clean Up Space |
| Starship Special Edition For Lunar Shuttle |
| Capturing Asteroids With Nets |
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'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.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
