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Science Fiction
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"I'm strictly an ivory-tower person. I can explain things but I can't do things."
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Okay, Verne and others have discussed getting to the moon. But once you are there, how are you going to get around?
This is not as far-fetched as you think. Skiing on sand is done right here on Earth - it's all the rage in Dubai.
![]() (Sand skiing on the dunes of Dubai) Spend the morning skiing down the high dunes, with refreshments. On the way back to Dubai, enjoy dune bashing and camel riding. Robert Heinlein also described moon skiing, an Eagle scout badge requirement, in his 1949 story Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon, published in Boy's Life.
![]() (Cover of 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Moonskis in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Pulling a toboggan on the moon in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Side-step uphill skiing from 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein) Apollo 17 geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt actually lamented "too bad I don't have my skis!" from the mountaneous Taurus Littrow Valley. Eventually, he perfected a kind of "lunar cross-country style" that worked like this:
"In the moon's low gravity, you can ski above the moondust--and I did. Imagine swinging your arms and legs cross-country style. With each push of your toe, your body glides forward above ground. Swing, glide, swing, glide. The only marks you leave in the moondust are the toe-pushes."
![]() (Skiing on the Moon [Ulrich Lotzmann]) In his award-winning novel Dune, Frank Herbert spends a lot of time talking about how the native Fremen needed to walk across sand dunes so as not to attract the planet's giant sand worms. I wonder whether the sound of schussing would have been safe... Compare to power-skis from Selection (1964) by Ursula Le Guin. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
Fully Electric, Fully Automated Vegetable‑growing Agribots
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
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