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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
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| Launching Laser | ||
| A set of very high-powered lasers used to power spacecraft. |
| Jerome Finney... showed that the spectrum was the light of our own sun, drastically blue-shifted. Some kind of mirror was coming at us, moving at a hell of a clip, but slowing as it came.
"That would mean a light-sail!" "Why the big deal, Frazer? I thought you already knew." "No. This is the first I've heard of it. I don't read the Sunday supplements." Morris was exasperated. "But you knew enough to call a laser cannon a launching laser!" |
| Technovelgy from The Fourth Profession,
by Larry Niven. Published by Quark in 1971 Additional resources -
|
Interested readers should also see the entry for laser cannon from Niven and Pournelle's 1974 novel Mote in God's Eye.
The idea of using light pressure to move a spaceship has been around for a long time; it was suggested by Jules Verne in his 1867 novel From the Earth to the Moon; see the entry for light pressure propulsion. The method was explicitly described by Edmond Hamilton in his 1929 short story The Comet Doom; see the entry for ship propelled by light pressure.
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| Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn |
| Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail? |
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
