Using SF Pulps to Float Future Tech: The Beamed Lightsail #SciFiSunday

You might be surprised to find out that an article in the December 1962 issue of the science fiction magazine Galaxy, an article on radicaly innovative technology, written by George Preston Field, was in fact written by Robert Forward. Forward published under a pseudonym so he could avoid reprisal from management at Hughes Aircraft Company. What was Forward writing about? The future of space travel. Here’s more from Centauri Dreams:

But despite being frequently referenced in the literature, Forward’s foray into Galaxy did not focus on sail technologies at all. Instead, it dwells on an entirely different concept, one that Forward called a ‘gravitational catapult.’ This is itself entertaining, so let’s talk about it for just a moment before pushing on to the actual first appearance of laser beaming to a sail, which Forward would produce in a different journal in the same year.

Forward is the master of gigantic engineering projects. Pluto had caught his attention because its eccentric orbit matched up with what Percival Lowell had predicted for a planet beyond Neptune, but its size was far too small to account for its supposed effects. Lowell had calculated that it would mass about six times Earth’s mass, a figure later corroborated by W. H. Pickering. But given Pluto’s actual size, Forward found that if it were the outer system perturber Lowell had predicted, it would have to have a density hundreds of times greater than water.

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