"Michael McCollum - The Sails of Tau Ceti" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

the time had come to begin explorations of the nearer stars. In a paper published in theSystem Journal
for Astrophysics , Pierce laid out the parameters for a successful interstellar crossing. PierceтАЩs starship
was no fanciful faster-than-light speedster, but rather a craft requiring most of a human lifetime to make
the journey. At the end of his paper, he exhorted his colleagues to build an instrumented probe as a
demonstration project and to send that device to explore the worlds known to circle Alpha Centauri,
SolтАЩs closest neighbor in the firmament.

The engines that would drive humanityтАЩs first interstellar probe would be powered by antimatter, a
technology first developed in the middle of the twenty-first century. The earliest antimatter powered
spacecraft had used micrograms of the volatile stuff to heat hydrogen, which was then expelled through
conventional rocket nozzles. Modern craft consumed kilograms of antiprotons, converting hydrogen to
relativistic plasma before channeling it rearward through a series of magnetic nozzles.

TheStarhopper booster would accelerate the instrument package to one-tenth light speed. As each tank
was drained of reaction mass, it would be jettisoned. At the end of the boost phase, the giant engines
would grow cold andStarhopper would coast outbound toward Alpha Centauri, having left a trail of
debris extending all the way back to Mars in its wake. Nearly half a century after launch, the instrument
package would command the booster to turn end for end and begin decelerating. Again, fuel tanks and
their supporting structure would be jettisoned as they were emptied. Even the engines would be
discarded once they finished their task of slowing the instrument package to intrasystem velocity.

TheStarhopper that entered the Centauri system would bear little resemblance to the one that left Mars.
The instrument package represented only 0.1 percent of the original vehicle mass. Even so, at 110 tons, it
was as large as a small spaceship. The instrument section contained maneuvering engines, antimatter,
reaction mass, a power reactor, communications gear, and instruments able to wrest the secrets from the
half dozen alien worlds known to orbit the Centauri suns.

Tory Bronson lay on her back on the carpeted deck of a Phobos surface dome and gazed up to where
the interstellar booster maintained station on the larger of the two Martian moons. She thought of all the
problems and crises that had been bested since the programтАЩs conception. At times, Dard Pierce had
often told her, it had seemed as though the probe would never be built. Even now, the coalition of
governments, universities, and corporations that supportedStarhopper were grudging in their largesse.

Tory had been three years old when Pierce published his original paper. By the time he had gathered up
enough backers to begin planning in earnest, Tory had entered the University of Olympus on Mars. It had
been her intention to become a lawyer. She first heard about the project at one of PierceтАЩs lectures,
which she attended because she needed the extra credit for a science class. That might have been her
only exposure to Starhopper had not her career plans changed at the beginning of her sophomore year.
The change came about when she was fitted with her first computer implant.

Like antimatter propulsion, the implants were an old technology that had been steadily improved over a
century of use. The first implants had been simple aural devices, little more than fancy hearing aids that
allowed the user to subvocalize a command, and then receive the computerтАЩs response directly to the
inner ear. In those days, implants had been little more than status symbols for the rich, subminiature
cellular phones for conducting business while pretending to do something else. Not until a method for
directly stimulating the brain was developed did the modern computer implant become possible. The
heart of an implant was its molecular computer and direct stimulus/response microcircuit. Once implanted
behind the left ear (the right ear for left-handed people), it sensed the complex electrical rhythm of the
brain and translated conscious thoughts into electrical impulses that were then transmitted to a remote
computer. The computerтАЩs response was then translated back into brain waves, and the required patterns