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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons
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| Ramrobot | ||
| An autonomous interstellar exploration craft using gathered hydrogen for fuel. |
| Ramrobots had been first visitors to all the settled worlds. The interstellar ramscoop robots, with an unrestricted fuel supply culled from interstellar hydrogen, could travel between stars at speeds approaching those of light. Long ago, the UN had sent ramrobots to nearby stars to search out habitable planets. |
| From A Gift From Earth,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1968 Additional resources -
|
More details:
Juno was invisible behind her
when the fusion motors fired. Immediately the cable at her tail began
to unroll. The cable was thirty miles
long and was made of braided Sinclair molecule chain. Trailing at the
end was a lead capsule as heavy as
the ramrobot itself.
Interstellar ramscoop robot #143
left Juno at the end of a linear accelerator. Coasting toward insterstellar
space, she looked like a huge metal
insect, makeshift and hastily built.
Yet, except for the contents of her
cargo pod, she was identical to the
last forty of her predecessors. Her
nose was the ramscoop generator,
a massive, heavily armored cylinder
with a large orifice in the center.
Along the sides were two big fusion
motors, aimed ten degrees outward,
mounted on oddly jointed metal
structures like the folded legs of a
praying mantis. The hull was small,
containing only a computer and an
insystem fuel tank.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Gift From Earth
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven
Tech news articles related to A Gift From Earth
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
Ramrobot-related
news articles:
- Pinta The Robot Sailboat
| China Wants To Build Mega Space Ships |
| Dream Of Building Your Own Rocket? |
| Used Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Will Fly Again |
| Laser-Powered Spacecraft To Explore The Solar System |
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'... iron tubes... the ends of the tubes were joined to each other...to preserve it from the action of the seawater.'
'Mr. Garden, you are in no condition to drive....'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'Holodeck 4 was waiting to be programmed...'
'... he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'I stood in line for half an hour for this, and it's just a blob!'
