4 ms·
One of the plot points in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves [minor spoiler alert] is an Elon Musk-type character that melts a nuclear reactor into an ice comet to mak
by pault 8y ago
One of the plot points in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves [minor spoiler alert] is an Elon Musk-type character that melts a nuclear reactor into an ice comet to make a thruster that uses the comet as fuel. I always thought that was really neat.
- awaaz 8y agoDon't forget Asimov's The Martian Way. First published in November 1952 (!!!), the story is about how Earth refuses to export its water to Martian colonies who are using them as reaction mass on their spaceships. The Martians, in response, fly to Saturn's ice rings and ship a huge chunk back by using it itself for reaction mass. Asimov truly was legendary.
- zepearl 8y agoI loved his "Robots"-trilogy (actually I think that there was a 4th book but when I the first 3 again recently I haven't been able to find the 4th one as ebook on Amazon & Kobo :( ) => they definitely motivated me to learn & program my first backpropagation network :)
- zepearl 8y agoKind of similar characters & practical approaches used many times in John Ringo's "Looking Glass" and "Troy rising" sci-fi series: story & characters are definitely "american-style" (very direct & aggressive), but in these cases I ended up liking quite a lot this approach (basically it fits the setup of the stories because of the fight for survival of the species). --- --- List of books (Spoiler alert - don't read the plots): Looking glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Space_Bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Space_Bubble Troy rising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Rising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Rising