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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
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![]() Okay, Verne and others have discussed getting to the moon. But once you are there, how are you going to get around?
This is not as far-fetched as you think. Skiing on sand is done right here on Earth - it's all the rage in Dubai.
![]() (Sand skiing on the dunes of Dubai) Spend the morning skiing down the high dunes, with refreshments. On the way back to Dubai, enjoy dune bashing and camel riding. Robert Heinlein also described moon skiing, an Eagle scout badge requirement, in his 1949 story Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon, published in Boy's Life.
![]() (Cover of 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Moonskis in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Pulling a toboggan on the moon in 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein)
![]() (Side-step uphill skiing from 'Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon' by Robert Heinlein) Apollo 17 geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt actually lamented "too bad I don't have my skis!" from the mountaneous Taurus Littrow Valley. Eventually, he perfected a kind of "lunar cross-country style" that worked like this:
"In the moon's low gravity, you can ski above the moondust--and I did. Imagine swinging your arms and legs cross-country style. With each push of your toe, your body glides forward above ground. Swing, glide, swing, glide. The only marks you leave in the moondust are the toe-pushes."
![]() (Skiing on the Moon [Ulrich Lotzmann]) In his award-winning novel Dune, Frank Herbert spends a lot of time talking about how the native Fremen needed to walk across sand dunes so as not to attract the planet's giant sand worms. I wonder whether the sound of schussing would have been safe... Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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