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"If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Spaceport | ||
| A location on the surface of a planet used for launching vehicles into space. |
| The space-ports at the three great cities, were, of course, occupied or blockaded by the Tellurian fleets; and Doane was obliged to make his bases of operations the lonely craters that once had been pirate strongholds. |
| Technovelgy from The Birth of a New Republic,
by M. Breuer (w/J. Williamson). Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
This word quickly became the standard term. However, even years later, the term was sometimes hyphenated, as in Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation. "His name is nothing... He followed you from the space-port."
Consider this use in The First Martian (1932) by Eando Binder:
To enhance their sales, certain combines of the sharks
put up signs and billboards:
“This marks the spot where the great Martian Space
Port will be built. Reliable backing. Buy stock now
and realize millions before a year’s time,” and accom-
panying it, would be a vivid, florid picture of a gigantic
space-ship, or perhaps a grotesque Martian, beckoning
and urging.
There's a whole page of pictures and information about spaceports at projectrho.
Compare to Earthport from Cordwainer Smith's 1950 story the Ballad of Lost C'Mell and don't forget the launching facility from Jules Verne's 1867 blockbuster From the Earth to the Moon.
An era of “wildcat speculation,” far transcending that
of the Civil War Period, set in and the gullible public
bought worthless stock from convincing and voluble professional sharks, for Martian-Earthian Freight Lines,
Inter-Space Express Co.'s, and Planetary Service Lines,
etc.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Birth of a New Republic
More Ideas
and Technology by M. Breuer (w/J. Williamson)
Tech news articles related to The Birth of a New Republic
Tech news articles related to works by M. Breuer (w/J. Williamson)
Spaceport-related
news articles:
- Britain To Build Spaceport, First In Europe
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
