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"Real science opens windows for us to look through. We're right at the footsteps of the most interesting scientists around."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Air-Propelled Train | ||
| A silent means of mass transit. |
This quotation comes from the start of the book; the main character, Montag, lives a peaceful and quiet life. His internal life is also peaceful and quiet.
| He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream tiled escalator rising to the suburb. Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name. |
| Technovelgy from Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
The use of the word "flue" here is peculiar; the word itself comes from a word meaning "to flow" and does refer to a passageway for conducting a current of air. But the most common use of the word is a reference to a fireplace chimney; this foreshadows the use of fire in the novel, just a little subliminal reference.
There is a prototype for an air-propelled train:
the AEROMOVEL® blowers propel air (under low pressure) through a duct built into the guideway. The pressurized air pushes a propulsion plate attached to the bottom of the vehicle. This propulsion plate acts like an upside down sail, propelling the vehicle forward and helping to stop it when the air flow is reversed.
Read more about it at AEROMOVEL - A pneumatically propelled automated peoplemover (APM) system.
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| San Francisco Autobus |
| Volvo's Autonomous Truck |
| Eviation Alice Electric Plane First Flight |
| Robotaxi By Cruise Premieres in Austin, Texas |
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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...'
