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"I operate by a code that makes me responsible for what I do, makes me definitely, directly, genuinely responsible. I am precisely the kind of person I made myself out to be."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Sounding Projectile | ||
| Provides a way to tell whether there’s a soldid surface on a cloudy planet. |
In the 1930's, little was known (or correctly inferred) about the planets. Obviously, Saturn is intensely cloudy. But can you find a solid surface?
| His hands clutched a switch. A slight movement shot a sounding projectile from a point on the undersurface of his craft. It darted down, and in a few seconds burst into a clouded patch of incandescence. That meant that it had struck something firm enough to discharge its percussion cap. |
| From Mad Robot,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
|
See the article on Impactor Determines Composition from The Mechanical Monarch (1958) by E.C. Tubb.
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| Spaceships Should Last So Long |
| Space Station Shutters |
| MIT Proposes Space Bubbles To Combat Climate Change, Misses The Point Of Space Bubbles |
| Study Reveals Effect Of Space Travel On The Brain |
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Science Fiction
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'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'THE SPACE VESSEL was traveling swiftly… For over five thousand years they had Voyaged on and on.’
'They circled the vast audiences, dancing, twittering, chirping...'
'The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side...'
'Jim, I saw them reduce four of my doctors and nurses into those little cubes!'
'Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts..'
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
