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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge
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Rocket Float |
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A sea-going floating platform for rocket launches. |
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THE Rocket III was berthed on her huge float, fifty
miles off Montauk Point. A monster dirigible
from the mainland had just discharged its cargo, the
highly concentrated liquid explosive which provided
tremendous propulsive energy for the liner in limited
storage space, and was headed for home. Scores of
smaller private aircraft hovered at a respectful distance,
awaiting the take-off of the great vessel — a sight they
had come hundreds, even thousands, of miles to witness...

(From Rocket float from 'Too Many Boards!' by Harl Vincent)
The time for departure was at hand, and the shrill
siren on the float warned the surrounding visitors to
withdraw to a safe distance. The screaming exhaust
of the vessel's rocket tubes was a thing to be feared, an
incandescent blast that could wither and destroy the
greatest of the ships of the lower air.
With its five hundred feet of glistening length resting
in the chute, its blunt nose pointed skyward at an angle
of thirty degrees, the Rocket III was a thing of beauty,
a monument to the genius and scientific attainment of
mankind. But, when the mighty energies were released from within, it became a monster of terrifying
power, a mechanism that went roaring into the skies
ahead of a trail of blinding magnificence, splitting the
protesting air with a screech whose intensity was beyond
all belief.
Precisely on schedule, the Rocket III hurled itself
into the heavens. When the last vestige of its flaming
tail had vanished, the awed spectators turned their ships
homeward, stunned and silenced by this marvel of the
twenty-first century. |
Technovelgy from Too Many Boards!,
by Harl Vincent.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1931
Additional resources -
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Compare to the artificial island for ocean rockets in Between Earth and Moon (1930) by Otfrid von Hanstein.
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