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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Moon Skis | ||
| Special wide skis for travel on lunar powder. |
Okay, Verne and others have discussed getting to the moon. But once you are there, how are you going to get around?
| Over the western horizon hung the Earth at last quarter, a green-blue giant moon...
MacIntyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash. Charlie followed his example. Then they swung the spare air bottles over their shoulders, and passed out through the lock. |
| From Requiem,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Not Known in 1939 Additional resources -
|
This is not as far-fetched as you think. Skiing on sand is done right here on Earth - it's all the rage in Dubai.
(Sand skiing on the dunes of Dubai)
Spend the morning skiing down the high dunes, with refreshments. On the way back to Dubai, enjoy dune bashing and camel riding.
In his award-winning novel Dune, Frank Herbert spends a lot of time talking about how the native Fremen needed to walk across sand dunes so as not to attract the planet's giant sand worms. I wonder whether the sound of schussing would have been safe...
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- Snowboarding On Mars? Heinlein Was Ready
| Revisiting A Cloud City On Venus |
| 'Windowless Cockpit' Like Star Trek's Patent Applied For |
| NASA's Warp Speed Starship Design |
| ForceShoes, NASA's Exercise Sandals For Astronauts |
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It's time we started to get rid of that distinction between metal and flesh, and IC and neuron, don't you think?
'...a wide sheet of clear material suddenly flared with light and swirling color.'
'Transmitting to its manipulator, far away now, all that it heard through its ear microphones...'
'I had a small can of powdered alcohol disguised as tooth powder...'
'The jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers)...'
'It cut her out of the stream of vehicles and reduced the speed of her car...'
