Science Fiction
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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
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In the novel, a very large building is constructed for the sole purpose of housing the Space Platform, a space station built on Earth and then rocketed into orbit by pushpots, independently manueverable engines.
The Shed seems to me to be a remarkable prediction of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). In 1961, NASA approached the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with a problem. They needed an interior space in which to put together the largest rocket of its time - the 363 foot tall Saturn V launch vehicle.
The Corps responded magnificently. Construction of the VAB began in 1962, with 4,200 steel piles driven to bedrock 160 feet below the surface. Four years (and 58,000 tons of steel) later, the $100 million dollar building was complete.
(Vehicle Assembly Building) I've been to Cape Canaveral (now the John F. Kennedy Space Center), and I can tell you that it is quite a sight. Note that the stars on the flag painted on the building are six feet in diameter; the stripes are wide enough to drive a tourbus on. It encloses more than 128 million cubic feet of space - the largest building in the world when built (in terms of volume enclosed). Max Urbahn headed the VAB design team of architects and engineers; he stated the design challenge this way:
"The VAB is not so much a building to house a moon vehicle as a machine to build a moon craft. The Launch Control Center that monitors and tests every component that goes into an Apollo vehicle is not so much a building as an almost-living brain. " Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
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'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
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Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
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'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
Harvest Power From Tears And Blinking With Smart Contact Lens
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
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