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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester
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| Finely Divided Dust Propellant | ||
| Reaction mass to drive spacecraft. |
| ...for all the problems it presented him, Man could not do without the Moon. It had been his first bridgehead in space, and was still the key to the planets. The liners that plied from world to world obtained all their propellant mass here, filling their great tanks with the finely divided dust which the ionic rockets would spit out in electrified jets. By obtaining that dust from the Moon and not having to lift it through the enormous gravity field of Earth, it had been possible to reduce the cost of space-travel more than ten-fold. Indeed, without the Moon as a refueling base, economical space-flight could never have been achieved. |
| Technovelgy from Earthlight,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Del Rey in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Compare to positive ray propulsion from The Prince of Space (1931) by Jack Williamson, the ion drive from Equalizer (1947) by Jack Williamson, the Sun-Powered Ionic Drive Motor from The Planet Strappers (1961) by Raymond Z. Gallun and ion cannon from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas.
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and Technology from Earthlight
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Tech news articles related to Earthlight
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Finely Divided Dust Propellant-related
news articles:
- Powdered Regolith Propulsion
| JAXA Int Ball 2 Coming Right Along As Star Wars Remote |
| Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now |
| Denmark Joins The 'Zero Debris Charter' To Clean Up Space |
| Starship Special Edition For Lunar Shuttle |
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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.'
