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"I don't have an e-mail address. As much as I admire the Internet I suffer literally agoraphobia, which in it's original sense means a fear of the marketplace. I do not want to receive three hundred e-mail messages per week from strangers…"
- William Gibson
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| Solar-Powered Aircraft | ||
| A plane powered entirely by solar energy. |
I don't know who first thought of powering an aircraft with solar energy alone; as far as I know, working models didn't appear until the 1970's. So, this is a fairly early mention of the idea.
| "Dad, I believe that you have been trying to develop a successful solar engine. One that could be placed in the wings of a plane to generate power from the light falling on that surface..."
"...the one big trouble with all solar engines, eliminating the obvious restriction that they decidedly aren't dependable for night work, is the difficulty of getting an area to absorb the energy. |
| Technovelgy from The Black Star Passes,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
The brothers Albert and Gaston Tissandier developed the first electrically propelled dirigible, first flown in 1883.
(Image: Library of Congress)
Compare to the electric plane from Synthetic (1930) by Charles Cloukey.
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and Technology from The Black Star Passes
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| Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones |
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
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'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
