Science Fiction
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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
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A clever, and realistic, strategy. This is an early use of this idea; I can't think of an earlier one.
Robert Heinlein described this idea in his 1941 classic Methuselah's Children:
He figured the relative vector, gunned the gig, flipped, and gunned to brake-homed-in three minutes off estimate, feeling smug. He cradled the gig, hurried inside...
See also Cargo for Colony 6 (1958) by Christopher Anvil:
The whole ship sprang forward, ramming New far back in the acceleration couch and choking the breath out of him. There was a high, squeaking screech, and his insides seemed to twist sidewise and up. A nauseous sense of being wrenched two ways at once gripped him, and he was swallowed in a rush of blackness. His last dwindling sensations were of a heavy crash and an abrupt silence...
"...just exactly what . . . did you do just then?”
"Spun the ship like a gyro,” said Hughes proudly, "jammed on full forward acceleration, then gave her everything I had to jerk the tail side-wise and around in a new direction. She really jumped, and then I improvised a little.” He chortled.
The 2016 series The Expanse is very true-to-life in space; this maneuver is shown. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Moonwalkers AI-Controlled Electric Shoes
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
Harvest Power From Tears And Blinking With Smart Contact Lens
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
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