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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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| Rocket Side Tubes | ||
| An early description of attitude jets, course correction by small emissions of gas. |
This is an early use of this concept, usually called a reaction control system (RCS); it's a spacecraft system that uses thrusters to provide attitude control.
| Left alone in the pilot-house, Evans sat at the control-board with eyes glancing from one to another of the recording dials above it. Now and then he depressed a firing-lever, firing one of the rocket’s side tubes to keep it from leaving its proper space-lane, but for the most part the great craft hurtled steadily onward in its course, and he occupied himself in contemplating through the windows the moon’s bright sphere and the dazzling light-patches on it that marked the position of the lunar cities. |
| Technovelgy from Evans of the Earth-Guard,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Air Wonder Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the emergency corrective rockets from The Emperor of the Stars (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the handheld personal rocket jet from Space Cadet (1948) by Robert Heinlein.
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Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
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| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
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'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
