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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross

Consolidator  
  A craft for embarking on voyages through space.  

One of the earliest descriptions of a craft which might make a journey in space, with motive power described.

But above all his Inventions for making this Voyage, I saw none more pleasant or profitable, than a certain Engine formed in the shape of a Chariot, on the Backs of two vast Bodies with extended Wings, which spread about 50 Yards in Breadth, compos'd of Feathers so nicely put together, that no Air could pass; and as the Bodies were made of Lunar Earth which would bear the Fire, the Cavities were fill'd with an Ambient Flame, which fed on a certain Spirit deposited in a proper quantity, to last out the Voyage; and this Fire so order'd as to move about such Springs and Wheels as kept the Wings in a most exact and regular Motion, always ascendant; thus the Person being placed in this airy Chariot, drinks a certain dozing Draught, that throws him into a gentle Slumber, and Dreaming all the way, never wakes till he comes to his Journey's end.
Technovelgy from The Consolidator, by Daniel Defoe.
Published by Not Known in 1705
Additional resources -

It's interesting to note that Defoe thinks about the need to have what later writers called "cold rest", a means of spending a long space voyage in suspended animation.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Consolidator
  More Ideas and Technology by Daniel Defoe
  Tech news articles related to The Consolidator
  Tech news articles related to works by Daniel Defoe

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