Arthur C. Clarke

The works

The Clarke Works Read for Engineering

Each row names what the work is read for; the rating is the status of that technology today.

Concepts

Clarke's Engineering, Concept by Concept

Each verdict is an editorial judgment; each concept links to the page that covers it.

Where it held

Where the Engineering Held

In the October 1945 issue of Wireless World, Clarke showed that three satellites at about 35,786 km above the equator, each orbiting once a day, could relay signals across the whole inhabited Earth. Syncom 3 reached geostationary orbit in 1964, and the band is now the most valuable real estate in orbit - see Earth Orbit and Comms & PNT.

Clarke's 1950 paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society proposed an electromagnetic track on the Moon to throw material into space without propellant. Lunar escape velocity is 2.38 km/s and there is no air, so a launcher a few kilometers long can reach it at tolerable acceleration for bulk cargo. Gerard O'Neill's mass driver and the lunar mass driver on Terafab's roadmap descend from this paper.

Rendezvous with Rama describes a cylinder about 50 km long spinning to give gravity on its inner wall, with the gravity falling toward the axis. Discovery's centrifuge in 2001 works the same way at small scale. Spin gravity follows directly from the rotation rate and radius, and Clarke got both right.

2010: Odyssey Two put an ocean and possible life under Europa's ice in 1982, before Galileo confirmed the ocean. Europa Clipper, launched in 2024, arrives in 2030 under planetary protection rules that keep Earth life out.

Where it did not

Where It Did Not

The Earth space elevator in The Fountains of Paradise needs a tether with a breaking length of thousands of kilometers. No material has been made in bulk with the strength the tether needs; carbon nanotubes reach it only as single molecules. The verdict is Open, and Mars or Ceres is a far easier first elevator.

HAL 9000 kills its crew because it is given contradictory orders. The failure mode is sound and the timing was not: no computer reached conversational ability by 2001.

Industry echoes

Clarke in the Space Industry

• Geostationary orbit is widely called the Clarke orbit, and the ring of satellites in it the Clarke Belt.
• Clarke wrote 2001 with Stanley Kubrick; the film and novel appeared together in 1968.
• Clarke co-wrote The Light of Other Days and the Time Odyssey trilogy with Stephen Baxter.
• His third law - that advanced enough technology looks like magic - is quoted across engineering and policy writing.

China

Chinese Programs and Clarke's Concepts

China's Beidou navigation system includes satellites in geostationary orbit, and the Tianlian relay satellites in geostationary orbit link Tiangong and Shenzhou to the ground - Clarke's relay in daily use. On tethers, Tsinghua University grew carbon nanotubes more than half a meter long in 2013, among the longest single nanotubes reported.

Contested

Deliberately Not Claimed

The load-bearing uncertainties, tagged with the confidence they actually earn.

Record

Provenance and Data Sources