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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Hand-Rocket | ||
| A handheld device that used reaction matter to aid explorers in space suits to move around easily in zero gee. |
This device solves one of the thought-experiments of early space enthusiasts; how do you move around when freely floating in empty space if you have nothing to push on?
| But Kark Al at that moment stepped calmly out from the lock into empty space! The chain at his belt yanked Lalla Dee and Rab and the robot after him. They all floated there in space, a human chain, scraping the hull of the huge liner as it forged onward.
Kark Al's hand-rocket flashed flame, its impulse dragging them all forward. They moved outward from the liner... |
| Technovelgy from Murder in the Void,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
V.E. Thiessen uses the same idea in his 1947 story Asteroid Justice:
Compare with the Reaction Pistol from Gordon A. Giles 1937 story Diamond Planetoid, the Personal Jet Thrust from Robert Heinlein's 1948 novel Space Cadet.
He saw the lock open on the Fleetblast and opened his own, propelling himself into space and across the void. A few guiding blasts of his hand rocket and he was inside the lock of the other ship.
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Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
| ISS Plagued By Leak - Again! |
| Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug |
| Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say? |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
