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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Big Push | ||
| A linear accelerator built on a long track; a mass driver. |
In principle, it is kind of like having a slingshot with a rubber band that is a hundred miles long. Put your vehicle on the track, then accelerate it until it can fly off.
| Probably there will never be another funeral like Jack's. The Big Push is only a third finished, and it's still two hundred miles of the biggest linear accelerator ever built, an electronic-powered railway crawling across the Earthside face of the Moon. One day we'll use it to launch starships. |
| Technovelgy from Limits,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1985 Additional resources -
|
From the story Spirals by Niven and Pournelle.
The Space Studies Institute built prototype mass drivers as early as 1975; as far as I know, the concept originated with Gerard K. O'Neill in the early 1970's.
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| Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say? |
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'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
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'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
