The Mittlewerk Express

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

OUTRSPACIA speculates:
" . . . Maybe you've all gotten here before. I don't know. But I believe this is the
center of the book. GR begins on a train. This section takes place on a
train, that is rolling through the Mittelwerke, where they are making the
Rocket. It makes a fine transition. Then at the other end of the line, the
end of the book, of course, we have the Rocket. What is a train, if it is not
a rocket? Perhaps it is a missile, a rocket bound to the ground, merely
lacking the power and the guidance to escape the earth. I've forgotten all
that math stuff, but maybe the train is a linear equation and the rocket is a
differential equation, or something like that. The parabola/rainbow of the
rocket arcing/screaming across the sky. The train merely screaming across the
landscape. If nothing else, the train is a predecessor to the  Rocket. The
Rocket is the natural extension of the industrial revolution which for a
period in time had as its most powerful example, the train. And the
description of the train traveling through the light of the phosphorus flare
could easily describe the flight of the Rocket. . . . "


An intersting thought.  On the one hand, the semi-comic train chase evokes 
countless film images (Buster Keaton not the least among them).  On the other
hand, the apparent force and terror of the train ride also suggests something
like the track-mounted rocket sleds used to subject early astronauts to
G-force training--that would be a "
natural" transition, indeed.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)