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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.
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). Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Spider-related
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'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?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...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.'
Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
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