Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Real science opens windows for us to look through. We're right at the footsteps of the most interesting scientists around."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Ring Road | ||
| A magnetically levitated train. |
The basic idea for a magnetically-levitated train was developed years earlier - so, this is not a Heinlein idea.
| Max kept his eyes to the northwest. He favored this spot because from it he could see the steel stilts and guide rings of the Chicago, Springfield, & Earthport Ring Road emerge from a slash in the ridge to his right. There was a guide ring at the mouth of the cut, a great steel hoop twenty feet high. A pair of stilt-like tripods supported another ring a hundred feet out from the cut. A third and last ring, its stilts more than a hundred feet high to keep it level with the others, lay west of him where the ground dropped still more sharply into the valley below. Half way up it he could see the power-link antenna pointing across the gap. On his left the guides of the C.S.&E. picked up again on the far side of the gap. The entering ring was larger to allow for maximum windage deviation; on its stilts was the receptor antenna for the power link. That ridge was steeper; there was only one more ring before the road disappeared into a tunnel. He had read that, on the Moon, entrance rings were no larger than pass-along rings, since there was never any wind to cause variation in ballistic. When he was a child this entrance ring had been slightly smaller and, during an unprecedented windstorm, a train had struck the ring and produced an unbelievable wreck, with more than four hundred people killed. He had not seen it and his father had not allowed him to poke around afterwards because of the carnage, but the scar of it could still be seen on the lefthand ridge, a darker green than the rest. |
| From Starman Jones,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Scribners in 1953 Additional resources -
|
You can see that this idea was set forth in a remarkably similar form decades earlier in Modern Mechanics and Inventions from 1931.
(Magnets Drive High Speed Suspension Trains Thru Air)
Thanks to Winchell Chung for this item.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Starman Jones
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Starman Jones
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
| CopterPack Is Robert Heinlein's 1954 Copter Harness |
| Las Vegas Tunnels To Have Autonomous Teslas |
| First Boring Passenger Station In Las Vegas |
| Tesla's 20,000 Superchargers |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
"We had leisure to make a thorough observation of the hidden side of earth's satellite."
'... iron tubes... the ends of the tubes were joined to each other...to preserve it from the action of the seawater.'
'Mr. Garden, you are in no condition to drive....'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'Holodeck 4 was waiting to be programmed...'
