Whipping out my handy-dandy file on Sky-hooks....
(What, don't you all have one of these... Lord,
I don't understand why they let the riff-raff subscribe
to this list...)
At any rate, the Sky hook idea is fairly old...
Yu. Artsutanov, discussed it in Komsomolskaya Pravda,
31 July 1960. This was discussed in Science, 17 Nov.
1967, 158:946-947. Another discussion occured in Science,
11 Feb. 1966, 151:682-683.
And of course of interest is a paper "A Non-synchronous
Skyhook", by Hans Moravec(!!!), in The Journal of Astronautical
Sciences, XXV(4):307-322, Oct-Dec 1977.
I'm unsure of the publication dates on the Clarke novels
but I doubt he originated the idea.
Robert
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