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Updated: June 1, 2025
In summary, this is a very elegant little assembly of receiver, data recorder, transmitter, and command circuits." "Fine. McDevitt, what about the rocket?" The man from Wallops Island shrugged. "Nothing very complex about it. It's a simple solid-fuel rocket with star grain, fired by a squib that is commanded from the ground. A squib is simply an igniter to start the fuel burning.
That ruled out the use of eight- and ten- and fifteen-gravity acceleration. It had to make use of a long period of relatively slow acceleration rather than a brief terrific surge of power. So its very special rockets had been designed as the answer. They were solid-fuel rockets, though solid fuels had been long abandoned for long-range missiles.
Joe's heart began to feel fatigue, and a man's heart normally simply doesn't ever feel tired. It became more and more difficult to see clearly. But he had work to do. Important work. The take-off rockets were solid-fuel jobs, like those which launched the Platform. They were wire-wound steel tubes lined with a very special refractory, with unstable beryllium and fluorine compounds in them.
But the baffles themselves crumbled and were flung astern, so that the solid-fuel rockets had always the efficiency of gas-throated rocket motors; and yet every bit of refractory was reaction-mass to be hurled astern, and even the steel tubes melted and were hurled away with a gain in acceleration to the ship. Every fraction of every ounce of rocket mass was used for drive.
The voice counted: "Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!" Joe pressed the master-key. The remnants of the solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. They flashed off into nothingness at unbelievable speed, consuming themselves as they went. There was again no weight. This time there was no resting. No eager gazing out the cabin ports.
But they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin steel absurdly thin but wound with wire under tension to provide strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon.
Assuming solid-fuel rockets like we used and you used, they are on a collision course." "Are you doing anything about them?" asked Joe absurdly. The voice said caustically: "Unfortunately, we've nothing to do anything with." It paused. "You, of course, can use the landing-rockets you still possess.
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