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

project and to send that device to explore the worlds known to circle Alpha
Centauri, SolТs closest neighbor in the firmament.
The engines that would drive humanityТs 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 programТs 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 PierceТs 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 computerТs 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