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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Rocketeering | ||
| Racing around in rockets |
| Rocketeering, you know, is a lot more
than just blasting the jets and lancing
straight up and out into cosmic space.
Have you ever seen a man-carrying skycraft that didn’t take a run? The old
aeroplane, autogyro, helicopter — which
didn’t simply blast into the air, but ac-
celerated slowly upward — liquid-powered rocket or gyrotomic? Spaceships
must also take a run, unless you want
the human cargo inside to suffer a miniature egg-scrambling at every take-off.
Steinfahl, of course, used the predestined method of checking recoil and thrust-pressure in later rockets: the old twin hull idea. But that necessitated a freely suspended inner chamber, plus intricate hydraulic shock absorbers connected to the outer hull. |
| Technovelgy from Ra For The Rajah,
by John Victor Peterson. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1938 Additional resources -
|
See also rocketeer from Sunward Flight (1943) by Leo Zagat, in the sense of a person who pilots rockets.
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
