Snowy Weather

When I got home, yesterday, I couldn't pull far enough into my driveway. I live on a hill, and not only is the street in front of my house steep but the first part of the driveway is a steep uphill run. A neighbor had parked his SUV directly across from my drive, and not even at the edge of the street, so I didn't have enough room to swing wide and approach nearly straight. There just wasn't enough traction at either end to get far enough into the drive with the wheels cocked that far over. In fact, I started sliding sideways, fortunately away from the car in the drive immediately uphill from mine.

I parked on the street in front of my house and went inside. I fed the cats, started Trebuchet (my current MUSH client) changed clothes, grabbed my snow shovel and started work.

After about twenty minutes I had the end of my driveway, the accessible portion of the street across from it and part of the street below it, as well as a patch behind where my car was then parked, reasonably free of slush and snow. This time getting well into my driveway was actually easy. My car was off the street for the night. :-)

Fentellectual Exercise

I recently purchased the new editions of _The Skylark of Space_
and _Skylark Three_ and re-reading those has got me thinking. (Uh-oh...)

The original novel was intended to stand alone. Even when
Great-Uncle Edward (no, not really) re-wrote it later, it retained a
unique flavor. However, the sequels read like most of his later works.
I've often wished the basic technology as described in the first novel
had been explored before he started adding all that "super science"
elaboration.

So, here's my premise. _The Skylark of Space_ was inspired by
real events, and was pretty much true to them up to the point where
Duquesne's ship shoots off uncontrollably. Seaton and company haven't
returned because Einstein was right, and they're all deep in time
dilation, less than a hundred light years from Earth. They'll be back in
about sixty thousand years.

Without Seaton, Crane and Duquesne the technology was not
developed. Crane's family, after a suitable period of mourning, packed
all their lab equipment away into storage. Where it is discovered nearly
a century later (that is, about now).

So, what could be done with this technology today? Assume a
semi-stable transuranic currently impossible to synthesize, which
catalyzes the transformation of copper into energy or force. Assume,
further, that geometry is important to the particular function. For
example, a basic drive bar, which generates unidirectional thrust, is an
approximately 2.5:1 cylinder (roughly the dimensions of a copper bath
;-). Attractors and object compasses are slimmer (the latter are
described as "needles" so assume they're 10:1 or more). Other geometries
might work better, but these were the easiest for Seaton to model. (Or
the shapes could simply be due to the physical limits of pure copper in
compression and tension.)

Less information is given on the repulsor and X-plosive effects.
I'm going to assume they're developments of the same phenomenon. The
best geometry for plain repulsion appears to be a spherical surface.
Copper plating on the ships, or a solid bead in the bullets. With the
latter a piezoelectric material in the nose crushes on impact,
generating an electric pulse which triggers a liberation of pure
repulsive effect in all directions.

Modern computers and manufacturing methods would allow us to go
much further with this technology. For example, a fixed array of
microscopic copper needles could be used to directly manipulate matter
on the molecular - and perhaps atomic - scale. Large pieces of perfect
materials could be made in this way. For the sake of tradition we'd
*have* to name some of them arenak, dagal and inoson. :-)

Assume that with computer control you can not only focus an
attractor on a specific object, but a specific substance. This could be
used to mine the oceans for gold... or more X.

Even just the three basic effects (thrust, attraction and
repulsion) would give us the solar system and nearer stars. Much as
described in _The Daleth Effect_ any object which could hold air and be
equipped with life support equipment (submersibles would be prime
candidates) would be candidates for conversion to spacecraft.

Any other ideas? (Silly question, I know.)