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"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Earthport | ||
| A massive spaceport that reared up from the surface of the earth to the edge of the atmosphere. |
| ...Earthport stood like an enormous wineglass, reaching from the magma to the high atmosphere. Earthport had been built during mankind's biggest mechanical splurge. Though men had had nuclear rockets since the beginning of consecutive history, they had used chemical rockets to load the interplanetary ion-drive and nuclear-drive vehicles or to assemble the photonic sail-ships for interstellar cruises. Impatient with the troubles of taking things bit by bit into the sky, they had worked out a billion-ton rocket, only to find that it ruined whatever countryside it touched in landing. The Daimoni-people of Earth extraction, who came back from somewhere beyond the stars-had helped men build [Earthport] of weatherproof, rustproof, timeproof, stressproof material. |
| Technovelgy from The Ballad of Lost C'Mell,
by Cordwainer Smith. Published by Fantasy Publishing Co. in 1950 Additional resources -
|
Who needs those twisty, bendy space elevators when you can build something so solid that (as my dad used to say) it's "not going anywhere!"
Thanks to the anonymous reader who submitted this item.
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| Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars |
| Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris |
| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
