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" I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. And if I feel like going on, or if something turns me on I'll just keep writing till I'm written out."
- Roger Zelazny
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| Supertank | ||
| An air-cushioned armored combat vehicle powered by a fusion generator. |
| "Even its 170 tonnes could not fully dampen the vibration of Two Star's fans at max load. The oval hull, all silvery-smooth above but of gouged and rusty steel below were the skirts fell sheer almost to the ground, slid its way through the grass like a boat through yellow seas..." |
| Technovelgy from Hammer's Slammers,
by David Drake. Published by Ace Books in 1979 Additional resources -
|
Details are given in another section:
Thanks to Gatomon41 for submitting this item!
"The primary breakthrough was the development of portable fusion power plants...the fusion's unit's almost limitless output was required to move the mass which made the new supertanks viable. Fusion units were bulky and moderately heavy themselves, but loads could be increased on a fusion-powered chassis with almost no degradation of performance. Armor became thick- and thicker. With the whole galaxy as a source of ores, iridium replaced the less effective steels and ceramics without regard for weight. "...Now that power was no longer a factor, even the armored bulk of a tank could be mounted on an air cushion. "The air cushion principle is a very simple one. Fans fill the plenum chamber, a solid-skirted box under a vehicle, with air under pressure. To escape, the air must life the edges of the skirts off the ground - and with the skirts, the whole vehicle rises...The vehicle skims over surfaces it does not touch."
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Tech news articles related to Hammer's Slammers
Tech news articles related to works by David Drake
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| Russians Create Robot Tank Platoons |
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'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'
'He wrote on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger...'
