![]() Engineers and astronauts are present as peripheral characters, but it is a business romance. “The Man Who Sold The Moon” is the story of how Harriman makes the first moon landing happen. Harriman, is what Musk sees when he looks in the mirror. Its protagonist, the idealistic business tycoon D.D. The story is, inarguably, Musk’s playbook. The shock of recognition will, I promise, flip your lid. The “key story” I just mentioned is called “The Man Who Sold The Moon.” And if you’re one of the people who has been polarized by the promotional legerdemain of Elon Musk - whether you have been antagonized into loathing him, or lured into his explorer-hero cult - you probably need to make a special point of reading that story. Heinlein sends people to colonize the moon, but nobody there has internet, or is conscious of its absence. (Written before 1950, remember.) But because Heinlein happened not to be interested in electronic computers, all the spacefaring in his books is done with the aid of slide rules or Marchant-style mechanical calculators (which, in non-Heinlein history, had to become obsolete before humans could go to Luna at all). The result, in the key story of the Future History, is an uncannily accurate description of the design and launch of a Saturn V rocket. ![]() Heinlein is pictured in an undated photo. Article content Science fiction writer Robert A. ![]() ![]() This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |