Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, Issue 45 — page 161: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FROM EARTR TO THE STARS! AUTHENTIC covers take you step by step from the first manned rocket to man's final conquest of interstellar space. Accurate, scientific, exciting ! This ts the way it will happen ! THIS MONTH'S COVER shows in completion the star ship we showed in construction on our last cover. After many years of effort, high in the cold space above Triton, moon of Neptune, far from the warm Sun and mother Earth, the space engineers have built this remarkable ship to take mankind to the stars. It represents the most ambitious project man has ever undertaken. The outer cylinder that lies midway along the ship contains the living quarters for the crew and passengers; these will include shops and farms and hospitals and all things necessary to make the ship a min- lature world, to sustain the passengers on their many-years-long trip. This cylinder has been specially designed to give maximum radiation of heat—a serious problem in such vessels. {Remember there is no air in space to waft away heat by convection.) The long central cylinder contains the engines. These are of a very special kind. They are ion-producers. A star ship could not possibly carry enough chemical fuel to take it over the vast distances of interstellar space. Instead, the ship will be propelled by a stream of electrically accelerated charged atoms (ions). These will pour out from the thin jets at the rear of the ship and keep it moving constantly forward at high velocity. Pernaps the most intriguing thing about these engines is that they devour themselves! As parts become worn out or burned out, they are fed to the ion producers and disintegrated. In this way, the mass of the ship is gradually reduced as it moves farther along its course. Such a ship would probably take something like 500 years to reach a fairly near star system. It would not take less than 100 years, and it might welltake 1,000 years. This is a one-way trip for the passengers. Next month we willsee our star ship out in the depths of remote space, tackling what will no doubt be fairly common, an emergency. comlicloooks.com