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"I was involved in a cloning project. .. to send me into outer space along with a lot of other people. Not the whole me - just a hair from my head, while I still had some. I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the distant future."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Rocket Racing | ||
| Use of reaction mass vehicles for races held within the solar system. |
I think it's important to understand the era in which this story was written. In 1925, Henry Ford was making a new Model T every twenty-seven seconds, and by the time of this story (1939), there were millions of second-hand cars around for every young man with a tool kit, which was most of them.
| I was down there, entered in the open-class main event, with a little five-ton soup can of rare vintage, equipped with quartz tube linings and an inch of rust all over... Anyway, I was down in the engine well, welding a new brace between the rocket stanchion and the main thrust girder...
They'd given out the course that morning. We were to head out from Kor, point straight at Jupiter with a climb out of the plane of the ecliptic, drive down and hit a beacon rocket they were holding on a direct line with the big planet, forty million miles this side of him; that made about an even three-hundred-million-mile course from Mars, out and back, figured for eight days at a constant acceleration and deceleration of two gravities. It had been advertised as the longest and toughest race in rocket history, and they were certainly living up to the publicity...
 (Rocket Racing from 'Habit' by Lester del Rey) The starter was singing out his orders, and the field was being cleared. Jimmy grabbed my hand. "Good luck, Len. Don't ride her harder than she'll carry..." Then they forced him off the field, and I was climbing into the cockpit, tightening the anchor straps of the shock hammock about the straitjacket I wore... Finally, I got the signal and gave her the gun, leaving Mars dangling in space while I tried to keep my stomach off my backbone. The first ten minutes are always the toughest... |
| Technovelgy from Habit,
by Lester del Rey. Published by Astounding in 1939 Additional resources -
|
Read more about this exciting era in the article for rocket-polo from Ra for the Rajah (1938) by John Victor Petersen.
Compare to the more genteel sport of solar sailing in this article on the solar yacht from Sunjammer (1963) by Arthur C. Clarke.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Habit
More Ideas
and Technology by Lester del Rey
Tech news articles related to Habit
Tech news articles related to works by Lester del Rey
Rocket Racing-related
news articles:
- Rocket Races Approved For Earth Only, Unfortunately
| Martha Stewart Approves Ojai 'Living Room On Wheels' |
| Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft |
| The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist |
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
