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"I was perfectly satisfied to write science fiction knowing that it would pay very little, that it would be seen by only a very few people."
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The Spider is a robot designed for speed in bridge-building; it extrudes the cables and works faster than any other component. They were well adapted for a free space environment.
A bit more detail:
Rob had seen that lightning flash of understanding illumine her face, and been shocked by it. He drew in a deep
breath, rubbed at his dark beard and looked with new respect at those alert, pale-blue eyes.
“I’ll bet people do that all the time with you,” he said wryly. “You look about eighteen, and you stare at them with
those big eyes and ask innocent questions. They want to show off a bit, the way I did a moment ago, and before they
know what’s happening they’ve spilled something important. Well, the damage is done. I won’t deny it, even though
it has been a well-kept secret. The Spider has a key bio component where logically there would be a computer. I
suspect that Regulo’s people have been going mad trying to come up with a microprocessor with a high enough level
of parallel processing—that was my bottleneck for about six months."
Compare to Arthur C. Clarke's spider used to test the cables of a space elevator in The Fountains of Paradise. Spinnerettes were used to handle and dispense continuous pseudo one-dimensional diamond crystal in building the cables.
Take a look at this very good article by Sheffield Space
Transportation
Without
Rockets:
BEANSTALKS , TETHERS , LAUNCH LOOPS , AND INDIAN ROPE TRICKS in Far Frontiers (1986). Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Spider-related
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
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'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
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