IEEE Spectrum: You invented a completely new technology for landing on the moon. It seems to combine a maglev train, a railgun, and a hyperloop. Can you briefly describe how that works and how you came up with it?
Kim Stanley Robinson: I got the idea from a lunatic friend of mine. It’s basically the reverse of the magnetic launch rails that have been postulated for getting off the moon ever since the 1930s: These take advantage of the moon’s light gravity and its lack of atmosphere, which allow a spaceship to be accelerated to a very high speed while still on the surface, after which the ship could just zoom off the moon going sideways, because there is no atmosphere to burn up in on the way out. If you just reverse that process, apparently you can land a spaceship on the moon according to the same principle.
It blew my mind. I asked about the tolerance for error; how precise would you have to be for the system to work? My friend shrugged and said it would be a few centimeters. This while going about 8,000 miles an hour (12,900 kilometers per hour)! But without an atmosphere, a landing can be very precise; there won’t be any winds or turbulence, no friction. It was so fantastic a notion that I knew I had to use it.
Kim Stanley Robinson
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Kim Stanley Robinson
Je signale cette interview de l'auteur de la Trilogie Martienne. Il revient sur son roman Red Moon.
Jérôme
'Pour la carotte, le lapin est la parfaite incarnation du Mal.' Robert Sheckley
'Pour la carotte, le lapin est la parfaite incarnation du Mal.' Robert Sheckley
Re: Kim Stanley Robinson
Retrouvez une interview de Kim Stanley Robinson !
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Re: Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson est à l'honneur dans Libération.
«La science-fiction est un outil pour comprendre la nature humaine»