"The Snowbank Orbit, Redux" Topic
1 Post
All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.
Please don't make fun of others' membernames.
For more information, see the TMP FAQ.
Back to the SF Media Message Board
Areas of InterestScience Fiction
Featured Hobby News Article
Featured Recent Link
Featured Ruleset
Featured Showcase Article
Featured Book Review
|
Please sign in to your membership account, or, if you are not yet a member, please sign up for your free membership account.
Tango01 | 15 Apr 2016 8:58 p.m. PST |
"We haven't yet found Planet Nine, but the evidence for its existence is solid enough that we can start thinking about its possibilities as a mission target. That work falls in this essay to Adam Crowl, a Centauri Dreams regular whose comments on articles here began not long after I started the site. An active member of the Project Icarus attempt to re-design the 1970s Project Daedalus starship, Adam is also the author of Crowlspace, where his insights are a frequently consulted resource. Today he harkens back to a 1960s science fiction story that has given him notions about a way not only to reach Planet Nine but to establish orbit around it. Fritz Leiber is better known for his fantasy and SF-fantasy, but he could write hard-SF too. A fine example is his 1962 story, "The Snowbank Orbit", the title of which alludes to World War II tales of pilots surviving bailouts without parachutes by plunging into snow-drifts. Five spacecraft, racing towards Uranus at 100 miles per second with empty tanks, intend a fiery plunge through the planet's atmosphere to brake into orbit. The rest of that story I will leave to the interested reader [available here] but the idea of aerobraking into orbit around a distant Planet Nine is worth discussing…" From main page centauri-dreams.org/?p=35392 Amicalement Armand |
|