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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Magnetic Anchor | ||
| A means of affixing an anchor point on a spacecraft hull. |
| ...a heavy magnetic anchor leaped from its catapult toward the passing ship, dragging its cable. It struck the liner's hull, clung fast. Like a silver fish, the Bellatrix plunged and darted for a time upon the line. But the smaller station held her adroitly, giving her opportunity neither to ram nor to break the cable. And steadily the ships were drawn together as the cable was wound upon its drum. The purple, fluorescent blast from the liner's motors was at last shut off. The two ships drifted side by side, at the cable's ends — hurtling down toward the black, red-flecked disk of the Dead Star... Five minutes later, the eleven of us were dragging ourselves across between the ships in clumsy, inflated suits, laden with weapons. As weird a journey as can be imagined, it was. Eleven swollen giants, climbing by their hands along a cable between two vessels in the void. For background, the flaming streamers of the Great Nebula, and the malign black disk of the Dead Star. |
| Technovelgy from Dead Star Station,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1933 Additional resources -
|
Here's another quote from The Saga of Pelican West (1937) by Eric Frank Russell:
“There’s little to tell.” She shrugged
and gazed pensively into the distance.
“I was official hostess on board the Ongortolla. When we were five days off
Great Plains, our ship was pirated by
Jason Kemp and his gang of toughs,
and -“
“Kemp, eh?” he interrupted.
“Yes. He swept alongside us,
clamped on with magnetic anchors,
forced the air lock and placed a prize
crew aboard. The Ongortolla hung in
space until Mars had swung clear, then
made for the asteroid belt.”
Compare to the magnetic grapple-beams from Solar Lottery (1955) by Philip K. Dick and the magnapoon from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson.
“NOW tell me what happened,” Pelican encouraged.
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Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
| SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha |
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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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'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... 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.'
