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Bigger Than Worlds By Larry Niven Just because you've spent all your life on one planet, doesn't mean that everyone always will. Already there are alternatives to worlds. The Apollo spacecraft have an excellent record; they have never killed anyone in space. The Soviet space station may have killed its inhabitants, but the American Skylab didn't. Alas, they all lack a certain something. Gravity. Permanence. We want something to live on, or in, something superior to what we've got: safer, or more mobile, or roomier. Otherwise, why move? It's odd how much there is to be said about structures larger than worlds, considering that we cannot yet begin to build any one of them. On- the basis of size, the Dyson sphere-a spherical shell around a sun-comes about in the middle. But let's start small and work our way up. The Multi-Generation Ship Robert Heinlein's early story "Universe" has been imitated countless times by most of the writers in the business. The idea was this: Present-day physics poses a limit on the speed of an |
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