Chapter 45 Sources of this book

Depiction of Captain Chandler's hunting territory, discovered in 1992, cf. the article "The Kuiper Belt" by Jane x. Luu and David C. Jewitt (The Kuiper Belt, Scientific American, May 1996) . The concept of "rings around the world" in Geostationary Orbit (GEO)—connected to Earth by towers on the equator—is entirely fanciful, but has solid science theoretical basis.This is apparently an enlarged version of the "Space Elavator" invented by St. Petersburg engineer Yuri Artsutanov.I had a nice meeting with this engineer in 1982, when St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad.

Asutanov pointed out that it is theoretically possible to run a cable between the Earth and a satellite that hovers over a specific area on the equator.Most of today's communication satellites are on GEO, that is, hovering over specific regions of the earth.With such a start, a space elevator (or, in Asutanov's eloquent term: the cosmic umbilical cord) could be constructed, and the system carrying GEO could be powered entirely by electricity.The rocket thrusters are only used during the rest of the journey. Avoiding the dangers, noise, and environmental hazards of rocket technology, space elevators dramatically reduce the cost of all space missions.Electricity is cheap, and it only costs $100 to take a person up to orbit and $10 to go around it, since most of the energy will be recovered on the journey down. (Of course, pay the higher ticket price to enjoy good food and watch movies. Even so, $1,000 can go to and from GEO, can you believe it?)

This theory is impeccable, but what kind of material can effectively withstand the suspension tension at a height of 36,000 kilometers from the equator, and have enough strength to carry it?When Asutanov wrote his paper, there was only one substance that met these arguably strict specifications: crystalline carbon, also known as diamond.Unfortunately, the required megatons of diamonds are not commercially available, although in 2061: A Space Odyssey I have explained why there are so many diamonds in Jupiter's core; and in The Fountains of Paradise Paradise) I propose a more accessible source: factories in orbit, where diamonds can be generated in a weightless state.

In August 1992, the space shuttle Atlantis attempted to take a "small step" towards a space elevator when it performed an experiment to release and retrieve a payload along a 21-kilometre tether.It's a pity that the project that invested in it got stuck a few hundred meters away. When the space shuttle Atlantis presented "Fountain of Heaven" at the orbital press conference, and the mission expert Jeffrey Hoffman (Jeffrey Hoffman) gave me a signed book when he returned to Earth, I am very happy. In February 1996, the second tethering experiment was slightly improved: the load really ran the full distance, but the cable broke when it was retrieved, and the insulation was not well done, resulting in leakage. (Perhaps this was a lucky accident: I can't help but think of Franklin's contemporaries who tried to repeat his famous but dangerous experiment -- the kite experiment in a heavy thunderstorm -- and died.)

Aside from the potential hazards, launching a payload from a space shuttle and clipping it to a tether can look like fly fishing: easy as it looks, it isn't.But eventually the final "Great Leap Forward" will be completed - all the way to the equator. Meanwhile, a third form of carbon, Buckminsterfullerene (C60, a football-shaped structure made of 60 carbon atoms), makes the concept of a space elevator more feasible. In 1990, a group of chemists at Rice University in Houston created a tube of carbon-60 with much greater tension than diamond.Dr. Smalley, the leader of the group of chemists, went so far as to claim that it was the strongest material ever made, adding that it would be possible to build a space elevator. (Update: I'm glad to know that Dr. Small was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this development.)

Now, here's a startling coincidence -- one that's so bizarre it confuses me: who's in charge. Buckminster.Buckminister Fuller died in 1983, so he didn't see the "backyballs" and "backytubes" discoveries that made him so famous.On one of his many final trips, I had the pleasure of flying him and his wife, Anne, in Sri Lanka, and took them to see specific places mentioned in The Springs of Paradise.Not long after, I recorded the novel on a 12-inch (remember the spec?) LP recorder (Caedmon TC 1606), while Barker kindly wrote notes on the record jacket.These events lead to a startling revelation

In the end, it got me thinking about Star City: In 1951, I designed a circular bridge with free movement and simple structure, which was assembled above and around the equator.The Earth inside the "halo" bridge is still spinning, and the circular bridge is spinning at its own rate.I foresee vehicles on Earth ascending vertically into the bridge, rotating, and descending to the desired position on Earth. It is my firm belief that Star City could be built if humanity decided to make the investment (which, according to the resulting assessment, is not a very large investment).In addition to generating new forms of life and making our planet more suitable for visitors from low-gravity worlds such as Mars or the Moon, all rocket research is done away from the surface and back to where they belong. of space. (Though I hope that the rocket launch is reenacted every year at the Cape Kennedy Space Center to evoke the excitement of the first rocket launch.)

It is almost certain that most of the cities will be built on stilts, with only a very small fraction used for technological purposes.After all, each tower is equivalent to a skyscraper with tens of millions of floors, and the rings around the cosynchronous orbit are between the earth and the moon, but closer to the moon.If this ring forms a complete circle, several times the population can live in this space. (This leads to some interesting logic problems, which I'm happy to use as "student work".) For a remarkable history of the Beanstalk concept, as well as other more advanced concepts such as antigravity and space warping, see Indistinguishable from Magic by Robert L. Forward ).

On July 19, 1996, I was surprised to read in a local newspaper that Dr. Chris Winter, leader of BT's Artificial Life Team, believed that the information and storage devices I described in this chapter could be used in Development completed within 30 years! "My 1956 novel 'The City and the Stars' (The City and the Stars) thought that these devices would not be possible in a billion years, obviously a failed imagination." Dr. Wind said that this kind of device can make We "recreate a person physically, emotionally, and mentally," and he estimates that the memory space required to do so is about 1013 bins, which is less than what I'd speculate about 1015 bins level two.

I wish the device had been named after Dr Wind, it would have sparked some serious debate in legitimate circles: "Soul Catcher".As for the application of this device to interstellar travel, please refer to Chapter 9. I believe I invented the palm-to-palm messaging described in Chapter 3, and thus discovered that Nicholas Negroponte and his MIT Media Experiment have been working on this for years , It is really ashamed. If the Zero Point Field (sometimes referred to as "quantum fluctuations" or "vacuum energy") could be developed, the impact it would have on our civilization would be enormous.All of today's energy sources -- oil, coal, nuclear power, hydroelectric power, solar power -- would be eliminated, and of course our concerns about environmental pollution would disappear with them.All of this turns into one big concern - thermal pollution.All energy ends up as heat, and if everyone had millions of kilowatts to play with, the planet would soon be like Venus: hundreds of degrees hotter in the shadows.

However, there is a bright side to this situation: there is no other way to avoid the next Ice Age, which is bound to happen. "Civilization is the intermission between the Ice Ages." The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. Even as I write these words, brilliant engineers in laboratories around the globe claim that they are developing this energy source.Physicist Feynman once estimated the volume of this energy source, to the effect that a mug-sized amount of energy would be enough to boil the Earth's oceans, which is really impressive. Of course, this idea will come as a surprise.In comparison, nuclear energy is no match at all. I'm curious, how many supernovae are actually born by industrial accidents? One of the main problems with moving in Star City is the distance.If you were to visit a friend in the next tower (communication can never replace contact, no matter how good virtual reality is), that's the equivalent of a trip to the moon.Even with the fastest elevators, it will take days, not hours, or people living in low-gravity regions won't be able to adapt to its acceleration. The concept of an "innertialless drive"—that is, a propulsion system that acts on every atom in the body so that when the elevator accelerates, the body does not experience stress—was introduced in the 1930s by "Space Drama "(Space Opera) master Smith (EE Smith) invented.This concept is not as improbable as it sounds, because the gravitational field acts on the body in this way. If you were falling freely near the surface (neglecting air resistance), every second your speed would increase by nearly ten meters per second.Also, you will feel weightless and experience no acceleration, although by 1 minute and 30 seconds your speed will increase to 1 km/s. The same is true if you fall under the gravitational field of Jupiter, (whose gravity is 2.5 times that of the earth), or even if you fall in a huge field such as a white dwarf or a neutron star (which is millions or millions stronger than the earth's gravity). trillion times), as well.You feel nothing, even if you reach the speed of light minutes after you set off.However, if you're stupid enough to enter a gravitational radius of matter, the tidal forces will quickly tear you to pieces because the forces are uneven.For further details, see my tragic but aptly titled short story "Neutron Tide" in my book The Wind from the Sun. "Inertialess thrusters" are like controllable gravitational fields that were rarely discussed seriously outside of science fiction until recently. In 1994, three American physicists developed some concepts of the great Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and discussed inertial propulsion. "Inertia as Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force" by B. Haisch, A. Rueda and HE Puthoff (Phys Review A, February 1994) , may become an important paper of landmark significance in the future, and in the novel, I have given it this status.The paper raises a fundamental and taken-for-granted question about how the universe came to be. What these three American physicists asked was: "What gives an object its mass (or inertia) so that it requires an external force to move, and an equal force to restore it to its original state?" Their tentative answer relies on a fact that is far from physicists' ivory towers and unknown: that the so-called empty space is actually a boiling cauldron of energy - the zero point field, which is surprisingly.The trio of physicists considered inertia and gravity to be electromagnetic phenomena that result from the interaction of objects and fields. Since Faraday, countless experiments have attempted to combine gravity and magnetism, and while many have claimed success, none of their results have been confirmed.Yet, while still far away, if the trio's theory is confirmed, it could open up the prospect of anti-gravity "space drives"; and, more fascinatingly, possibly even controlling inertia.This creates an interesting situation: if you touch a person with the least amount of force, he will instantly disappear thousands of kilometers away within an hour, until he hits the other end and rebounds to a stop.The good news is that traffic accidents will be impossible; autonomous cars and their passengers can crash into each other at any speed without getting hurt. (You think life is chaotic enough today? Maybe the future will be even more lively!) The "zero-gravity state" of space missions as we know them today (a journey that will be enjoyed by millions in the next century) seemed like magic to our grandparents.Eliminating, or simply reducing, inertia is a rather different state, if not downright impossible.But it's a great idea, because it enables something like "teleportation": you can travel anywhere (at least on Earth) almost instantly.Frankly, I don't know how I'd manage Star City without it! In this novel I made an assumption that Einstein was right that no signal or object can travel faster than the speed of light.A few recent papers involving complex math seem to suggest that, as many science fiction writers are accustomed to, hitchhikers in the galaxy might not have to endure this annoying limitation. Overall, I hope these three physicists are right, but there seems to be a fundamental objection.If Faster Than Light (FTL) is possible, why don't these hitchhikers, or wealthy travelers, make the trip? The answer is that, just as we would not develop spaceships fueled by coal, there must be other better ways for aliens to build interstellar vehicles. It takes a surprisingly small number of "bits" to define a person, or store all the information a person may acquire in a lifetime, as described in Louis K. Scheffer's "Machine Intelligence, the Cost and Expenses of Star Trek." The Paradox of Interstellar Travel and Fermi's Paradox" (Machine Intelligence, the Cost of Interstellar Travel and Fermi's Paradox, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 35, no. 2 [June 1994]: 157-175).This paper (certainly the most unconventional since the serious QJRAS was published) estimates that the total mental state and memory of a 100-year-old man occupies about 10 to the 15th bin.Even today's optical fibers can transmit this information in minutes. I think a transport plane for interstellar travel that won't be produced before 2001 will seem comically short-sighted in the next century, and there are currently no interstellar tourists simply because nothing has been built on Earth to dock spaceships.Perhaps the alien spacecraft has set off and is moving slowly... It was a privilege to have the opportunity to honor the members of Apollo XV.After returning from the moon, they sent me the landing model of the lunar module Falcon, which is now prominently displayed in my office.Above are traces of the path left by the Lunar Rover during its three tours, one of which bypassed the Earthlight gap.Inscribed on the model: "To Arthur Clark, Apollo 15 crew thank you for your vision of space. Dave Scott, Al Worden, Jim Irwin." In return, I dedicate to them Earthlight (written in 1953, set in the region where the lunar rover passed in 1971): "To Scott and Irwin, first To those who set foot on the land; to Wooden, who watch over them in the tracks." After Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra reported on CBS that Apollo XV was about to return to Earth, I flew to the Spaceflight Ground Command Center to watch it return.I sat next to Wooden's daughter, who was the first to notice that one of the capsule's three parachutes was not deployed.It was a tense moment, but fortunately the remaining two were still qualified for the landing mission. Refer to the part of Chapter 18 of "2001: A Space Odyssey" that describes the collision of space probes.A similar experiment is currently planned for the upcoming Clementine 2 mission. When I read in "2001" that the Lunar Observatory discovered Asteroid 7794 (Asteroid 7794) in 1997, I felt a little embarrassed.I'll move it to 2017 - my 100th birthday. Just a few hours after writing the above paragraph, I am very pleased to learn that the asteroid 4923 "Asteriod 4923 (1981 EO27 )", was named Clark, in part in honor of Project Spaceguard.I was told with deep apologies that due to a moment of oversight, number 2001 was outdated, as was the man named Einstein.Excuses are all excuses. But I am very happy to know that 5020, which was discovered on the same day as asteroid 4923, has been named Asimov (American biochemist and writer, who has created many science fiction novels and popular science books), although it is very exciting. Sadly, my old friend will never get to know the news. As explained in the Preface to this book, and in 206l, I hope that the ambitious Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons will bring us more details about this strange world and the Man dazzled close-up. Well, after many delays, Galileo arrived at its first destination, Jupiter, and performed admirably.However, there is a problem, for some reason, the main antenna is not turned on.This meant that images had to be sent back via a low-gain antenna, which was unbearably slow.Although the computer reprogramming on the ship has miraculously made up for this regret, it still takes hours to receive messages that should have been sent back within minutes. So we have to be patient, and before the Galileo mission of June 27, 1996, I had begun eagerly exploring Ganymede in fiction. On July 11, 1996, two days before finishing this book, I downloaded the first images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and luckily so far, my descriptions have not contradicted reality.But if the current scenery is not a crater made of ice sheets, but palm trees and tropical beaches, or even worse, a "YANKEE GO HOME" sign (the slogan of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War), I will be in big trouble . I'm particularly looking forward to the close-up of Ganymede City (Chapter 17 of this book).This striking structure is exactly as I described it—although I hesitated to do so, for fear that my "discovery" would make the front page of the National Prevaricator.In my eyes, it is more artificial than the famous "Mars face" and its surroundings.So what if its streets were ten kilometers wide?Maybe Ganymede is just that "big"... The city can be found in NASA Voyager images 20637.02 and 20637.29; or more conveniently, in John H. Rogers' immortal book, The Giant Planet Jupiter, Figure 23.8 found in. There is clear evidence to support Ted Khan's astonishing assertion that most humans carry at least a little bit of a crazy gene, see my TV series "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe" 22 episodes of "Meeting Mary".You must know that Christians are only a small group of human beings. Compared with these believers who once worshiped the Virgin Mary, more believers also worship other noble goddesses, such as Rama, Kali, Shiva. (Siva), Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, Osiris, etc. Most startling, and regrettable, is the case of Conan Doyle, a supremely intelligent man whose beliefs made him a raving lunatic.Although his favorite psychics are constantly being exposed as frauds, his faith in them remains steadfast.And the person who created Sherlock Holmes even performed the highest level of escape technique.To "disappear" himself, trying to convince the great magician Houdini.This escapade technique, as Dr. Watson is fond of saying, "is as simple as it gets." Digression" (The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle) article. The inquisition tried heresy, and this pious cruelty is not inferior to the former Cambodian Prime Minister Pol Pot (Pol Pot) and the German Nazis. For details, see Carl Sagan (Carl Sagan) in "The Demon-Haunted World" (The Demon-Haunted World) World) is a scathing attack on New Age fools (Nitwittery). At least USCIS has taken action against the brutality of religious fanaticism. Time Magazine's Milestone column on July 24, 1996 reported that girls who were circumcised because of their home traditions must be given sanctuary. After I finished this chapter, I came across Anthony Storr's Feet of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus (The Free Press, 1996) , the latter can be said to be an authority in this field.It's hard to believe that this holy scam has amassed 93 Rolls-Royces until the US Federal Marshals arrested him belatedly today.To make matters worse, 83 percent of his thousands of fellow American nerds have infiltrated colleges, and thus fit one of my favorite definitions of an intellectual: educated beyond their intellectual level. In my 1982 book "2010: A Space Odyssey", I explained that the Chinese spacecraft that landed on Europa was named in honor of Dr. Qian Xuesen, one of the founders of the US-China rocket program. Qian Xuesen, born in 1911, received a scholarship in 1935, allowing him to leave China to study in the United States.There he went from pupil to colleague of the eminent Hungarian aerodynamicist Theodore voll Karman.Later, as Caltech's first Goddard Chair Professor, he helped found the Huggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (precursor to Pasadena's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory).Just after China tested nuclear missiles in its territory, the New York Times commented: "Qian's life is a satire of the history of the Cold War." (October 28, 1996) He contributed significantly to American rocketry research in the 1950s under Top Secret approval.But during the crazy McCarthy period, when he tried to visit his home country, he was arrested by the US authorities on false secrecy charges.After multiple hearings and extended detention, he was eventually deported back to his homeland - taking with him all his unparalleled knowledge and expertise.As many of his accomplished colleagues have stated, this is one of the dumbest and most shameful things America has ever done. After he was expelled, according to Zhuang Fenggan, vice chairman of the China National Space Administration and the Association for Science and Technology: "Qian Xuesen started from scratch and engaged in his rocket business... Without him, China would be far behind in technology by 20 years." Perhaps, so It will also delay the deployment of the deadly Silkworm antiship missile and the Long March satellite launcher. Not long after I finished this novel, I was awarded the Von Karman Award, the highest honor of the International Astronautical Society, in Beijing!It was an offer I couldn't refuse, especially when I learned that Dr. Qian lives in Beijing.Unfortunately, when I got there, I found out that he was in hospital for observation due to illness, and his doctor did not allow visitors. For this, I am very grateful to his personal assistant, Major General Wang Shouyun. He delivered the signed and "2061" to Dr. Qian through appropriate channels, and also sent a large set of "Qian Xuesen's Works Collection: 1938" edited by him. —1956" (Science Press, 1991, No. 16 North Street, Donghuangchenggen, Beijing, 100717) was presented to me.This is an excellent anthology, starting with many aerodynamic discussions with von Karman, and ending with monographs on rockets and satellites.The last one is "Thermonuclear Power Plant" (Jet Propulsion, July 1956), written by Dr. Qian when he was still an FBI prisoner.The article also touches on a topic that is even more talking today: "Power stations using deuterium fusion reactions", although so far little progress has been made on this topic. On October 13, 1996, just after I left Beijing, I was pleased to learn that Dr. Qian, who is 85 years old and has limited mobility, is still continuing his scientific research.I sincerely hope that he likes "2061", and I hope that this "3001" can be dedicated to him in the future. In June 1996, after the Senate conducted a series of hearings on computer security matters, on July 15 of the same year, President Clinton signed Executive Order No. 13010 in response to "computer attacks controlling information or communication components of critical infrastructure" (" Cyber ​​Threats").A strong force against cyber terrorism has been established, and there are representatives of CIA, NSA, and various defense units. Little rascal, here we come... After writing the above paragraph, I became curious about the ending of the movie "ID4 Interstellar Terminator" that I hadn't seen yet. I heard that the ending is like a Trojan horse massacring a city, using a computer virus to fight back!I've also been told that the movie opens exactly like Childhood's End and contains everything that any sci-fi novel since Georges Melies' Trip to the Moon will have cliche. I can't decide whether to congratulate the authors for their divine originality, or accuse them of prescient plagiarism—an eternal sin.Well, I'm afraid I can't stop John Q. Popcorn from thinking I've plagiarized the ending of "ID4 StarTerminator".