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"Fuzzy logic tries to get machines to think like people do, with inexact fuzzy terms."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Slowboat | ||
| Slower than lightspeed spacecraft used for interstellar colonization. |
One of the hallmarks of Niven's novels is the use of realistic technology for space travel.
| Settling Home had been made easier by two techniques. The slowboats had carried sixty colonists each, in stasis. Sixty colonists would have filled three or four slow boats a century earlier. And, though no living thing could survive travel in a ramrobot, it had proved possible to ship fuel to the slowboats by ramrobots. An older technique was used extensively: colony supplies were shipped by ramrobot to orbit around Home, saving room aboard the slowboats. |
| Technovelgy from Protector,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1973 Additional resources -
|
There is no way for a spacecraft to travel faster than light using currently available technology. However, interstellar colonization is possible using ships that travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.
Consumables are the biggest problem, given the length of time; also, journeys that take longer than a human lifetime are not easily undertaken.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
