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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Hands Free Helmet | ||
| The helmet of a powered suit has controls activated by head movements. |
The powered suit or exoskeleton was controlled entirely by careful feedback to your usual muscle movements. So, how could you manipulate the suit controls?
| Since your head is the one part of your body not involved in the pressure receptors controlling the suit's muscles, you use your head -- your jaw muscles, your chin, your neck -- to switch things for you and thereby leave your hands free to fight. A chin plate handles all visual displays the way the jaw switch handles the audios. All displays are thrown on a mirror in front of your forehead from where the work is actually going on above and back of your head. All this helmet gear makes you look like a hydrocephalic gorilla but, with luck, the enemy won't live long enough to be offended by your appearance, and it is a very convenient arrangement; you can flip through your several types of radar displays quicker than you can change channels to avoid a commercial -- catch a range & bearing, locate your boss, check your flank men, whatever. |
| Technovelgy from Starship Troopers,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959 Additional resources -
|
The first head-up displays (HUDs) were created during WWII. An early example of what would now be termed a head-up display was the Projector System of the British AI Mk VIII air interception radar fitted to some de Havilland Mosquito night fighters, where the radar display was projected onto the aircraft's windscreen along with the artificial horizon, allowing the pilots to perform interceptions without taking their eyes from the windscreen.
Compare to the more modern sfnal ideas like the overlay specs from Charles Stross' 2007 novel Halting State and the smart contact lenses from Fast Times at Fairmont High by Vernor Vinge (2001), and somewhat earlier, the DreamTime contacts from Niven and Barnes' 1992 novel The California Voodoo Game.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Starship Troopers
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Starship Troopers
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Hands Free Helmet-related
news articles:
- Preorder Recon Jet - It's Heavy Duty Glass
- Navdy HeadUp Display (HUD) For Your Car
- Squad X Core Technologies For Infantry
| Man Builds 200 Foot Basement Firing Range |
| Russians Create Robot Tank Platoons |
| Unmanned Boats Attack At Sea |
| Iron Drone Raider Counter-UAV Operations |
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
