Re: Pamela Sargent (was Re: Michael McCullum (Re: Novels that came from short stories))

jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx (James Nicoll) wrote:

In article <go6moa$bl2$3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Michael Stemper <mstemper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <go6j8q$jee$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx (James
Nicoll) writes:

1: Rich spacers segregated for the most part from the relatively poor
low-abedo population of Earth, something of a recurring theme back then,
and the bit where they spun up Venus using magic-tech powered by handwavium.
It takes an unreasonable amount of energy to do that. They'd have been
better off lockign Venus into a 1:1 resonance and letting the atmosphere
transport heat.

Alexander Abian! Paging Professor Alexander Abian to the *white* courtesy
phone, please!

Moving Venus might well be easier than giving it a 24-hour day.

I liked Niven's method of moving planets around the solar system. He
put a fusion rocket engine in the atmosphere of one of the gas giants.
Pulse it every once in a while to keep it warm enough to float. When
you need to use it, Pulse it to push the rocket deeper into the
atmosphere, then return to your previous altitude by buoyancy. Repeat
many times to push the gas giant into the right place to attract the
target planet, gradually modifying the target planet's orbit through
many encounters.

In the book, he chose Uranus as the gas giant to use, probably just
for the phrase he never used the book itself. "Stick a hot rocket up
Uranus!"

I'm not sure how you spin up a rocky planet. If you mount a rocket at
the equator and push, you need an awful lot of fuel. And you need a
pretty powerful rocket to ensure that the ejecta escapes completely
from the atmosphere.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
.

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