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Oct. 21st, 2011 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baloonworldI'm reading Rendezvous with Rama. Arther C Clark makes up the sport of airbiking or human-powered flight, only attempted on the moon and mars colonises.
"What's the endurance record for sky-biking?"
"Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. On the moon of course...blah balh 2 km"
I enjoy the insufferably detailed time given (partly excusable: the speaker is an athlete in the same discipline, so it's the record to beat), but mostly I enjoy that, by the standard of human powered flight, it's pretty pathetic: When the book was written in 1973, the Jupiter flying bicycle had already flown a 1 km course in a couple of minutes. Taking sixty times longer to go twice as far in 1/6 gravity must be some sort of demented scifi insult to his made-up sports man.
"What's the endurance record for sky-biking?"
"Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. On the moon of course...blah balh 2 km"
I enjoy the insufferably detailed time given (partly excusable: the speaker is an athlete in the same discipline, so it's the record to beat), but mostly I enjoy that, by the standard of human powered flight, it's pretty pathetic: When the book was written in 1973, the Jupiter flying bicycle had already flown a 1 km course in a couple of minutes. Taking sixty times longer to go twice as far in 1/6 gravity must be some sort of demented scifi insult to his made-up sports man.
