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"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Reaction-Motors | ||
| A spacecraft engine that works by firing matter out at high speed. |
This idea makes use of conventional physics.
| For three days Captain Grant had kept his great space-liner… ahead of the questing disintegrator rays of the Black Hawk only by burning his full battery of reaction-motors at their maximum power. |
| Technovelgy from Twelve Hours To Live,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Here's what the drive looked like in operation:
The glow, he knew, was a fluorescent, electronic discharge in the radioactive gases jetting from the rockets of the racing ship...
The idea behind a reaction-motor is Newton's Third Law of Motion, which decrees that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For a spacecraft to move forward, you must throw matter out the other end.
Compare to the reactionless drive idea, which encompasses the various hyperdrives that allow a ship to move from one point to another in space, without traversing the space in between. See the inertialess drive from 'Doc' Smith's 1934 novel Triplanetary.
…Grant saw a vague pink glow come into being in the jet, star-sprinkled sky behind…
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More Ideas
and Technology from Twelve Hours To Live
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Tech news articles related to Twelve Hours To Live
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
| Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say? |
| Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail |
| The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds |
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
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'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
