Down yonder a reader writes:
This doesn’t deal with Crichton per se, but with a cool Idea
harvested from Science Fiction and vastly applicable to the real
world…Jimmy, have you ever heard of the space elevator?
And on a side side note, Kim Stanley Robison’s "Red Mars" Trilogy is sci-fi WELL worth your time!
Thanks for the sci-fi recommend and the link to the Space.Com story!
For those who may not know, a space elevator is a massive tower that reaches earth orbit, in theory allowing us to ship men and material up into space much more safely, cheaply, and enviromentally-friendlyly than with the current rocketry program.
According to the link provided, some folks are talking about having a space elevator up in 10-15 years.
No word on if Otis will make it.
HERE’S WIKIPEDIA’S ARTICLE ON SPACE ELEVATORS.
Space elevators are a staple of sci-fi. Not only does Red Mars (which I haven’t read) have one, so do many other works. For example, Arthur C. Clark’s (venomously anti-Christian) novel 3001 (that’s three thousand and one) has the Earth of that year ringed by a series of massive equatorial space elevators. (The natives complained about how long it took to get all the satellites and space junk out of orbit to keep them from colliding with these ultra-tall space elevators).
One word of caution about space-elevators, tho. Precedent suggests that the construction process can be plagued with various problems, including sudden-onset massive language mutation.
Sounds like something from “Babel-on 5”.
Or…
Naming it after the book which first featured such a tower, they could call it the “Genesis Device”.
Boo…. hiss…. booooo….
Woo! You quoted me! I’m cool 😛
For another fun time, I might suggest you try to solve this 12 week puzzle…
Arthur C. Clark’s (venomously anti-Christian) novel 3001 (that’s three thousand and one)
Oh, please do post about this sometime! I was thinking of reading it one of these days. I’d like to know what you might have to say about it. Do you also think the same thing about his other books?
2001 is one of my favourite Sci-Fi books. Though I read it ages ago, before coming back to the Church. It’s certainly not a Christian worldview but I don’t remember any overtly anti-Christian elements. Of course, I wouldn’t even have noticed at the time if there were.
Speaking as an engineer with interest in space-related technology, “space elevators” do offer the possibility of very low dollars-to-pound capability.
However, I given the current international political climate, I invite you to use you imagination as an Islamokazi flys a 737 jet into the side of the carbon-fiber tower…
… now, imagine that tower falling.
Unless we can defend it, it is not worth building.
Crazy Fact:
Another name used for space elevators by some is “Beanstalks”.
I don’t remember 3001 being especially anti-Christian, apart from the usual sort of dribble, although it was a while ago that I read it and I might have forgotten something important. I remember that all the old religions had been discredited, I think except for maybe a few backwater fundamentalist planets, and the only religious argument left is between ‘theists’
and ‘deists’, theists being in the future those who believe there is only one God, and deists believing there is at least one God. And the word ‘God’ is a swearword, instead they say ‘deus’. And I think in the foreword or afterword Clarke had some snarky remarks along the line of ‘sorry if I’ve offended you’re one true religion that you believe is the one true religion because you were born into it.’ Which, of course, doesn’t explain conversion, (especially among intelligent people who used to be atheists etc), and anyway that sort of thing cuts both ways, you could just as easily point to a lot of atheists and say they only thought that because they were born into it. If there were any worse things (like Phillip Pullman level bad) I’ve probably forgotten them, and that’s probably for the best.
Arthur C. Clark’s (venomously anti-Christian) novel 3001 (that’s three thousand and one)
Well, I’ve just finished reading 3001 and all I can say is: wow. It’s not so much a science fiction novel as it is a political manifesto. And it’s not so much a political manifesto as it is an anti-Christian epileptic seizure. And the Catholic Church seems to get almost all of this shower of saliva and bile.
I knew I was in for trouble when he started waxing nostalgic about the greatness of Lenin. It got progressively worse from there.
Without a doubt this is the worst book I have every read in my entire life.