Comment by fragmede
go back a bit further though and you'll get to Arthur c Clarke who accurately predicted geostationary communication satellites
go back a bit further though and you'll get to Arthur c Clarke who accurately predicted geostationary communication satellites
And also a human mission to Jupiter aided by a sentient computer in the year 2001.
As I recall, his communication satellite depiction included humans living on it full time to keep it running. Also not quite how it turned out.
I have the utmost respect for him, but he was not immune to getting the future wrong like other science fiction authors.
Clarke's original prediction, in a 1945 letter to Wireless World, is as follows:
>> An "artificial satellite" at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half the earth's surface.
>> Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet. I'm afraid this isn't going to be of the slightest use to our post-war planners.
His short story The Sentinel, the precursor to 2001 A Space Odyssey, also has, IIRC, a description of the crew of a lunar rover frying sausages on a hob during one of their missions. And The Deep Range posits mass farming of whales to feed one eighth of the world population. I loved his fiction as a kid but the predictions haven't aged well.