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"I love that computer science has made mathematics into something like an experimental science. I was never all that good at proving things, but I love doing computer experiments."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Asteroid Nets | ||
| Capturing small asteroids or fragments using rocket nets. |
| They might as well be stars, for all the progress he had made with them. He had been here a week, spreading his nets for asteroid fragments like the rest of them, and never a sign of his presence had they shown. They hung there, cold and aloof—almost suspicious, he would have thought, had they any reason to be suspicious.
Not that they were unfriendly by nature, these men who spread their nets to trap the errant meteors; but they were a clannish tribe, known to one another from season to season, more snobbish than any social ruling class. They were close-knit, bound together by bonds of danger and hazard, and the dream of sudden wealth. Through the left lower quadrant of the transparent nose he saw one of the nets flare into quick acceleration. It was too far away to be his own, and he watched it, each corner of the net a flaming ribbon of rocket fire in the velvet black of space. A moment later he knew whose net it was, for the mining ship Fleetblast slid by him in pursuit, controlling the rocket-powered net from the remote controls in her maw. The Fleetblast sped on, unable to equal the instant acceleration that the touch of the meteor sent into the rockets of the net. But she was soon catching up. With her remote controls she was slowing the rockets of the net, as she increased her own speed. In a few minutes both ship and netted meteor would be hanging motionless alongside, the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap. |
| Technovelgy from Asteroid Justice,
by V.E. Thiessen. Published by Planet Stories in 1947 Additional resources -
|
Great descriptive prose makes this a fine story:
Compare to asteroid space flyer from The Death's Head Meteor (1930) by Neil R. Jones,
landing on an asteroid from Murder on the Asteroid (1933) by Eando Binder and
asteroid rocket from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson.
Before the Aeries her net spurted four ribbons of flame. In a surge of power the Aeries was off, acceleration full, straining like a hound after a rabbit. There would be no more conversation from the Aeries, Sam knew, until the catch was landed.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Asteroid Justice
More Ideas
and Technology by V.E. Thiessen
Tech news articles related to Asteroid Justice
Tech news articles related to works by V.E. Thiessen
Asteroid Nets-related
news articles:
- Capture Asteroids In A Bag
- Capturing Asteroids With Nets
| Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside? |
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
