Thursday 10 October 2024

Changes In Space

More changes in space:

"Bo was larger and heavier than most spacemen - he'd never have gotten his certificate before the ion drive came in -..."
-"Holmgang," I, p. 22.

"The Goshawk was the first of Harriman's ships to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic power-piles - or rather the first that did not blow up."
-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 131-141 AT p. 132.

We are finding a very close future historical parallelism here. (I was surprised to read that Rhysling was on the first trip to Mars.)

"She was the old Falcon, youngest of the Hawk class and the first ship to apply the Harriman Trust's new policy of extra-fare express service between Earth cities and any colony with scheduled stops."
-Heinlein, op. cit., p. 137.

(Harriman gives way to the Harriman Trust.)

Heinlein presents more stories that read like magazine articles published during his future history series.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The real world parallel I thought of was the work Elon Musk has been doing at Tesla, designing, building, testing new, reusable, increasingly powerful and versatile space ships. Hurrah, he deserves to become a trillionaire for doing that!!!

Ad astra! Sean