Arthur C. Clarke has died!

[Mike]

Author Arthur C. Clarke has died. He was the writer who bought us The Sentinel which was later adapted into the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. He had a good run at 90 years of age but it is still sad.

[BarcelonAl]

I just read his obituary on the Beeb site, had no idea he was involved with the UK's work on developing radar during WW2.

Some of the innovations he foresaw were incredible; space shuttles, sattelite communications, super-computers...incredible. I wonder what his most outlandish idea was?

[mr_e]

Damn: the guy was quite astounding in some of the things he thought up. He was responsible for inspiring several astronauts to pursue their careers, I believe, and most likely a load of scientists as well. An incredible imagination which still remained quite grounded in reality, resulting in some of his concepts coming to life.

I've read 3001... (but not 2001 / The Sentinel for some reason): one of the coolest things from that was the idea of transport rings around the earth (using the earth's rotation to help travel speeds, possibly) with huge lifts / living quarters leading up to them. These would also allow spacecraft to simply be "let go" into space as opposed to the current rocket launches. Freakin' sweet.

[Mike]

It was also imitated in Red Mars series where they threw up a huge cable to the moon and used it as a massive lift - they then catapulted spaceships towards Mars to reduce the travel costs.