🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan21.110438.1@fnalf.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalf.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

>I always thought this technology [gas-core nuclear engines] was a trifle 
>advanced to be ready in only 2001, 

That depends on the type of gas core.  I believe that NASA's 1976 "Forecast 
for Space" said the light-bulb variant, at least, could be ready well before 
that time frame.  (Assuming development starting in 1976, that is.)


>but remember that Kubrick's people were busy little beavers
>in the 34 years following 1967-- they had dug out underground hangars
>on the Moon for their spacecraft, with elevators, had started regular
>Pan Am service to orbit, had built half a space station.

>It is sad to think that *they* were supposed to be *us*. :-(

On the other hand, remember that Forbidden Planet, in the 1950's,
began with the narrator's voice saying, "In the last decade of the
21st Century, Mankind reached the Moon."  Rober Heinlein was a bit
more optimistic in "The Man Who Sold the Moon," placing the event
in 1979 but, of course, no one believed *that*.