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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Puff (Puff Balls) | ||
| Material that is used to help Skyrines dropped to the surface of Mars get rid of some of that excess velocity. |
Okay, you've arrived in orbit around Mars. What's a (fast) way to get to your destination on the surface?
| We ride ten to a [aero] shield for a few minutes... we all roll off...
My drop pack spins out millions of threads like gossamer, almost invisibly thin. We call this puff. The threads expand to a lumpy ball fifty meters wide, which wobbles and snatches at Mars's thin, thin air - and then gloms onto other balls, other Skyrines enveloped in puff. All around our jammed puffballs, curling thread tips burn away... |
| Technovelgy from War Dogs,
by Greg Bear. Published by Orbit in 2014 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the ablative heat shield from EE 'Doc' Smith's 1934 novel Triplanetary.
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'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
