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"Science fiction and science have always danced around each other. Science fiction is the subconscious of science."
- Greg Bear
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| Dust-Ski | ||
| Special vehicle adapted for quick travel over powdered lunar soil. |
This novel is famously concerned with the dust on the surface of the Moon - sometimes referred to as lunar soil to distinguish it from the chunkier forms of lunar regolith.
| At that very moment... one of the searching dusk-skis was passing directly overhead. Built for speed, efficiency and cheapness, not for the comfort of tourists, it bore little resemblance to the sunken Selene. It was, in fact, no more than an open sledge with seats for the pilot and one passenger - each wearing a space suit - and with a canopy overhead to give protection from the sun. A simple control panel, motor and twin fans at the rear, storage racks for tools and equipment - that completed the inventory. A ski going about its normal work usually towed at least one carrier sledge behind it, sometimes two or three, but this one was traveling light. |
| Technovelgy from A Fall of Moondust,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Harcourt, Brace and World in 1961 Additional resources -
|
Planetary scientists fretted in the 1960's that a space ship landing on the Moon might actually disappear into the dust covering the surface.
This device is similar to a jet-ski, but for that lunar powder. Robert Heinlein wrote about the idea of skis for lunar powder by analogy to snow skis; see the entry for moon skis from his 1939 novel Requiem.
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I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
'He carried on his person a triggering mechanism sensitive to his heartbeat.'
'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
