Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Where the Imagination Goes...

The Technology of the Small

"Dust" inspired postage-stamped sized satellites carried into space on the Endeavor and may one day travel to Saturn and beyond.

Nano-technology--or microscopic technology--has been a premise in many SFR novels, but what about the techonology of the merely small? Thousands of marble-sized probes could be launched into space by a single rocket and sent to planets, asteroids, comets or other bodies to gather data. Might we one day send one to the nearest star?  The nearest known planet outside the Solar System? Into a Black Hole?

What other ideas does the Technology of the Small inspire for you?

2 comments:

  1. Bioplague! (Microscopic warfare)

    Authors are a strange breed, taking stuff that should scare the crap out of us (and actually probably DOES scare the crap out of us), and gleefully inserting it into our stories.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Uh huh.

    We probably make more than a few FBI watch lists with the stuff we research for our novels.

    Computer voice: *Would you like to play Global Thermonuclear War?* (Anyone remember War Games?)

    ReplyDelete

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