The traveling-public gripes at the lack of direct Earth-to-Moon service, but it takes three types of rocket ships and two space-station changes to make a fiddling quarter-million-mile jump for a good reason: Money.
The Commerce Commission has set the charges for the present three-stage lift from here to the Moon at thirty dollars a pound. Would direct service be cheaper?—a ship designed to blast off from Earth, make an airless landing on the Moon, return and make an atmosphere landing, would be so cluttered up with heavy special equipment used only once in the trip that it could not show a profit at a thousand dollars a pound! Imagine combining a ferry boat, a subway train, and an express elevator—
So Trans-Lunar uses rockets braced for catapulting, and winged for landing on return to Earth to make the terrific lift from Earth to our satellite station Supra-New York. The long middle lap, from there to where Space Terminal circles the Moon, calls for comfort-but no landing gear.
The Flying Dutchman and the Philip Nolan never land; they were even assembled in space, and they resemble winged rockets like the Skysprite and the Firefly as little as a Pullman train resembles a parachute.
The Moonbat and the Gremlin are good only for the jump from Space Terminal down to Luna... No wings, cocoon-like acceleration-and-crash hammocks, fractional controls on their enormous jets.
The change-over points would not have to be more than air-conditioned tanks. Of course Space Terminal is quite a city, what with the Mars and Venus traffic, but even today Supra-New York is still rather primitive, hardly more than a fueling point and a restaurant-waiting room. It has only been the past five years that it has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service to passengers with queasy stomachs.
The Commerce Commission has set the charges for the present three-stage lift from here to the Moon at thirty dollars a pound. Would direct service be cheaper?—a ship designed to blast off from Earth, make an airless landing on the Moon, return and make an atmosphere landing, would be so cluttered up with heavy special equipment used only once in the trip that it could not show a profit at a thousand dollars a pound! Imagine combining a ferry boat, a subway train, and an express elevator—
So Trans-Lunar uses rockets braced for catapulting, and winged for landing on return to Earth to make the terrific lift from Earth to our satellite station Supra-New York. The long middle lap, from there to where Space Terminal circles the Moon, calls for comfort-but no landing gear.
The Flying Dutchman and the Philip Nolan never land; they were even assembled in space, and they resemble winged rockets like the Skysprite and the Firefly as little as a Pullman train resembles a parachute.
The Moonbat and the Gremlin are good only for the jump from Space Terminal down to Luna... No wings, cocoon-like acceleration-and-crash hammocks, fractional controls on their enormous jets.
The change-over points would not have to be more than air-conditioned tanks. Of course Space Terminal is quite a city, what with the Mars and Venus traffic, but even today Supra-New York is still rather primitive, hardly more than a fueling point and a restaurant-waiting room. It has only been the past five years that it has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service to passengers with queasy stomachs.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Space Jockey
The planet of Zamaron is a hell of a long ways from Earth, but if you know the right shortcuts (through spacewarps) and have the right vehicle (a power ring), it can be made in less than a day. Provided your will power doesn't run out.
Katma was carrying the Power Battery with her on a tether. Both it and the battery were invisible. Hal wanted to get the thing finished in under a day, but the trip up and back would take over 24 hours. When they got tired, they just
Katma was carrying the Power Battery with her on a tether. Both it and the battery were invisible. Hal wanted to get the thing finished in under a day, but the trip up and back would take over 24 hours. When they got tired, they just
After leaving town, they used a sizable chunk of their savings... to pay for travel. Tendai wasn’t much for sightseeing, but he didn’t begrudge her this because she seemed more tolerant of his supposed shortcomings than she’d been in a long while.
They toured the Solar System. They flew through the tumbling icy serenity of Saturn’s Rings—once through the vast Cassini Division, then again through the far narrower Keeler Gap. They watched the ice geysers of the moon Enceladus continually spraying one of the vast “minor” ringlets into existence. They flew in the savagery of Jupiter’s Red Spot, mightiest of maelstroms, the tempest to swallow worlds—and then, in a quieter part of that planet of skies, glided and beheld a golden heaven in which moons bobbed above clouds the size of continents. They hit a few of the countless tourist and historical spots in the Asteroid Belt: the museum at Piratesnest, Kip’s Inn, Webra’s Snare, the rose greenhouse at Expury, and they attended a worship service at God’s Rock.
She’d been wary of returning to Mars, but decided that as long as they skipped Jantown, it was foolish to avoid a whole planet. They saw natural wonders like Olympus Mons and the Iron Cliffs, and historical sites like the House of Belcanda, the Phillips Memorial at Romulus, and the bloody-historied Court of Kings in Kyvadia.
They toured the Solar System. They flew through the tumbling icy serenity of Saturn’s Rings—once through the vast Cassini Division, then again through the far narrower Keeler Gap. They watched the ice geysers of the moon Enceladus continually spraying one of the vast “minor” ringlets into existence. They flew in the savagery of Jupiter’s Red Spot, mightiest of maelstroms, the tempest to swallow worlds—and then, in a quieter part of that planet of skies, glided and beheld a golden heaven in which moons bobbed above clouds the size of continents. They hit a few of the countless tourist and historical spots in the Asteroid Belt: the museum at Piratesnest, Kip’s Inn, Webra’s Snare, the rose greenhouse at Expury, and they attended a worship service at God’s Rock.
She’d been wary of returning to Mars, but decided that as long as they skipped Jantown, it was foolish to avoid a whole planet. They saw natural wonders like Olympus Mons and the Iron Cliffs, and historical sites like the House of Belcanda, the Phillips Memorial at Romulus, and the bloody-historied Court of Kings in Kyvadia.
