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"There was a time when one old eccentric guy with a notebook could do something important to science. Now even the resources of a major university are often not enough."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Orbital Mirror | ||
| A huge reflective surface in orbit around a planet or moon, the purpose of which is to focus sunlight onto the surface. |
| That ship was quite something. There may be a few of them left - bulky old KH-type ore carriers. The series has been discontinued now, but it seems to me I saw one or two of them on the inter-asteroid runs a few years ago. Her capacity was something like two hundred thousand tons net and she was loaded to the ceil-plates with granular magnesium and sodium for the Sun mirrors of Titan. I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable. You may not know, though, that the girders are all solid mag, because great rigidity isn't needed out there, and mag is cheap. The mirrors are silvered with sodium, which is bright and easy to handle. They have a patrol for each of the mirrors, which patches up meteorite punctures when they occur, squirting liquid sodium around the holes until they fill, then shaving them down with N rays. Well, we were bringing them their stock in trade, and it was interesting cargo to handle. |
| From Completely Automatic,
by Theodore Sturgeon. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Here's another use of this term, from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Mathew Stover (2005):
The artificial daylight spread by the capital's orbital mirrors is sliced by intersecting flames of ion drives and punctuated by starburst explosions...
Compare to the electrono-mirror from The Day We Celebrate, by Nelson S. Bond (1941).
The skies of Coruscant blaze with war.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Completely Automatic
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Tech news articles related to Completely Automatic
Tech news articles related to works by Theodore Sturgeon
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- NYC Heliostats And Star Wars Orbital Mirrors
- Crowdfunded Russian Beacon Satellite Is An Orbital Mirror
| MIT Wants To Catch Interstellar Visitors |
| Starlink Orbital Network Like Coruscant Traffic Jam |
| NASA Competition To Design A Bucket Drum For Moon Mining |
| Are You Ready For Commercial Space Travel? |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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