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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Spider | ||
| A robotic device that both extruded cable and climbed along it; a space construction robot. |
The Spider is a robot designed for speed in bridge-building; it extrudes the cables and works faster than any other component. They were well adapted for a free space environment.
| The two great ovoid bodies were hanging near the surface of the asteroid, about a hundred meters apart. The eight thin metallic legs were pointed downwards, balanced delicately a few centimeters clear of the surface. Between them, probing deep into the interior of the asteroid, was set the long proboscis. As Rob watched, the great, faceted eyes turned towards him. The Spiders were aware of his presence. Somewhere deep in their organic components lurked a hint of consciousness.
Corrie had been fascinated by them from the first moment she saw one. "Why eight legs?" she had asked. Rob had shrugged. "It extrudes material like a spider. How many legs wouldi you have given it? |
| Technovelgy from The Web Between the Worlds,
by Charles Sheffield. Published by Not Known in 1979 Additional resources -
|
A bit more detail:
Rob had seen that lightning flash of understanding illumine her face, and been shocked by it. He drew in a deep
breath, rubbed at his dark beard and looked with new respect at those alert, pale-blue eyes.
“I’ll bet people do that all the time with you,” he said wryly. “You look about eighteen, and you stare at them with
those big eyes and ask innocent questions. They want to show off a bit, the way I did a moment ago, and before they
know what’s happening they’ve spilled something important. Well, the damage is done. I won’t deny it, even though
it has been a well-kept secret. The Spider has a key bio component where logically there would be a computer. I
suspect that Regulo’s people have been going mad trying to come up with a microprocessor with a high enough level
of parallel processing—that was my bottleneck for about six months."
Compare to Arthur C. Clarke's spider used to test the cables of a space elevator in The Fountains of Paradise. Spinnerettes were used to handle and dispense continuous pseudo one-dimensional diamond crystal in building the cables.
Take a look at this very good article by Sheffield Space
Transportation
Without
Rockets:
BEANSTALKS , TETHERS , LAUNCH LOOPS , AND INDIAN ROPE TRICKS in Far Frontiers (1986).
Compare to the metallic spider from The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells,
the scarab robot from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun,
the spider robot from The Mystery of Element 117 (1949) by Milton K. Smith,
the mechanical hound from Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury,
the metal insects from The Invincible (1954) by Stanislaw Lem,
the Sheem spider robot from The Witches of Karres (1966) by James Schmitz,
the spider tripod from Rendezvous With Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke,
the spider robotic insects from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton and the recon spiders from Minority Report (Movie) (2002) by Steven Spielberg.
"...The Spider is a machine with a biological
component.”
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Web Between the Worlds
More Ideas
and Technology by Charles Sheffield
Tech news articles related to The Web Between the Worlds
Tech news articles related to works by Charles Sheffield
Spider-related
news articles:
- Spidernaut, Orbital Construction Robot
- Robotic Space Spiders To Crawl Sub-Orbital Web
- Robot Fabricates Endless Tools For Itself (Updated)
- Robonaut To Get Eight-Legged Spidernaut Configuration?
- SpiderFab Spider Robots To Weave Space Structures
- Archinaut 3D Printing Autonomous Space Manufacturing System
- Siemens 3D Printing Robot Spiders
- RAMST - Robotically Assembled Modular Space Telescope
- Digital Construction Platform Robot 3D Prints A Building
- Spider Flyer Walker Space Suit For Mars Astronauts
- Autonomous 'Fiberbots' Weave Large Structures
- CNSILK Robotic Spider Builder
- Looms To Manually Weave Lunar Rover Wheels
| 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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'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.'
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...'
