I’ve been rereading Arthur Clarke’s “Rama” series and have a question. If you’re unfamiliar with the book, Rama is the name given to a mysterious spacecraft that does a flyby of our inner solar system. It’s a hollow cylinder 50KM long and with a diameter of 16KM. It’s rotating fast enough to give 1g if you’re inside on the wall and has a breathable atmosphere.
The story takes place when there are colonies on the Moon, Mars, and on a moon or 2 around Jupiter and Saturn. Cosmonauts from Earth are diverted from a supply mission to investigate Rama. At one point, one of the characters is going to fly a pedal operated ultralight aircraft to explore the interior. Now, at one end of Rama at the hub there are a series of airlocks leading from the outside to the inside. On the inside of the base, there are 3 ladders turning into stairways spaced 120° apart leading to the inner wall. So, anyway, this fellow takes off from the hub in his ultralight. And at this altitude, he’s weightless. He heads down to a lower height and reports the ultralight handles better with the extra G from flying 7km above the inner wall.
I don’t understand why he’d notice any G at all? How is the centripetal/centrifical force acting on him? He’s not in contact with the vessel at all.
The air would be dragged along by the rotating wall. While you’re in the center it looks like the cylinder is rotating around you. As you lose altitude the air starts dragging you along with it and the wall slows down. After a bit the wall looks stationary. But you are flying in a spiral in reference to the outside.
Man it’s been over thirty years since I read that book. Does it hold up to modern reading? I know a lot of old books I gone back to reread have felt so dated.
The book has the best ending of nearly any book I’ve ever read.
One of the main characters is feeling down because Rama is now out of reach, and there’s so much more they could have learned. Then, suddenly, he remembers…
How involved was Arthur C Clarke in the sequels? Was he a true co-author or was it mostly the other dude writing them? I remember reading the first sequel and thinking it was kind of “meh”, and never read any further.
One of the classics, which I hadn’t read since a couple of years after it came out back in the early 70s. I have (fairly) recently heard a section of it on the radio which prompted me to finally re-read it.
It’s certainly not bad, but continually cutting away from Rama to the politicing going on elsewhere was a bit distracting, and adding in the genetically up-lifted/modified primates should either have been dumped or expanded, imo.
Of these ‘giant objects humans come across is space’ novels of the time (BDOs, although this one isn’t dumb!) it probably beats Niven’s Ringworld but my favourite remains Orbitsville by Bob Shaw.
My favourite ACC novel remains The City and the Stars.
Gentry Lee did most of the writing for the rest of the books in the series, with ACC providing “editing suggestions”. They really didn’t make any impact on me at all, and after reading “The Garden of Rama” I gave up entirely. It’s difficult to describe what they were missing, but the writing was bad, the characters were badly portrayed, and in general, I agree with your assessment of “meh”. I certainly wouldn’t read them again, or recommend them to anyone.
I listened to the first one not long ago, which prompted me to do some reading about it after I was done. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the “Ramans do it in threesomes” line (or whatever) wasn’t originally there, and that the publishers pressured Clarke into adding it so that they could tack on a couple of sequels later on.
The moment they docked with Rama, the were interacting with it. Sharing the same inertia and frame of reference. When he steps out into the middle of it in the ultra-light, he doesn’t stop interacting with that frame of reference.
Now he’s not interacting with the rotation, but as he gets lower into the atmosphere, he does interact with that, which would cause him to begin interacting with said rotation (and experiencing a bit of wind), and thus, begin experiencing the rotationally created gravity.
