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"Conspiracy theories are big because they're comforting. Any conspiracy is infinitely less multiplex than the real deal, which is multiplex to the point of being unknowable."
- William Gibson
 |
| Slowboat | ||
| An interstellar craft carrying people. |
Larry Niven originated this term, which came to have several uses.
| Having located a world the right distance from the star to which it was sent, the ramrohot probe would drop and circle until it found a place at ground level which matched its criteria for atmospheric composition, average temperature, water vapor, et cetera. Then the ramrobot would beam its laser pulse back at the solar system, and the UN would respond by sending a colony slowboat. Unlike the ramrobots, the man- carrying slowboats could not use interstellar ramscoops. They had to carry their own fuel. It meant that the slowboats took a long time to get where they were going, and there were no round trip tickets. The slowboats could not turn back. |
| Technovelgy from The Ethics of Madness,
by Larry Niven. Published by If in 1967 Additional resources -
|
Joe Haldeman finds a slightly different use for this word in his 1979 story The Pilot:
“Our next guest is a woman with a marvelously rare occupation.” Occupation! He smiles offcube and the picture scale diminishes to include her as well, not smiling, trying not to fidget on the filthy leather chair. “She is a spaceship pilot . . .’’I am a spaceship."... but no ordinary rocket jock. She pilots a slowboat between the Earth and the outer solar system— the asteroids, even as far as Saturn. Her name is Lydia Meinenger and she's a fellow New Yorker.” New Yorker. "Lydia, would you tell us something about slowboats; how they — ”
“In the first place,” she interrupts, "they aren’t slow. They go much faster than anything you use in the Earth-Moon system. The name is a hangover from the old robot tugs that crawled along on Hohmann transfer orbits, to minimize fuel use. A Hohmann tug took six years to get to Saturn; I can make it in thirteen months. Nine months, with a Jupiter flyby. But 1 can’t do that with passengers.”
"Because of the radiation?”
"That’s right.” Warm like summer sunshine. "They can't wrap everyone up in lead, the way I am.”
Compare with the city ship from Star of Wonder (1953), by Julian May and generation ship from Star Ship (1955) by EC Tubb. The New Frontiers from Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children was effectively a generation ship - except everyone lived so long! Also, see the multi-generation space voyage from The Return of the Murians (1936) by Nat Schachner.
('The Pilot' by Joe Haldeman)
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Slowboat-related
news articles:
- AI Tries To Replicate Famous People
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
| SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space |
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'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
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'My homeland is being threatened by the Replicators. Thus far all attempts to stop them have failed.'
'A robobus had just rolled up to the curb.'
'And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.'
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
