Arnold Judas Rimmer - Space Pioneer!

Again, You'll Have To Stick With Me For A Bit -
This stuff is as tenuous as the Moon's atmosphere.* Okay, I take it you are familiar with that comedy classic "Red Dwarf", probably the only sitcom ever to feature the Esperanto language?  In case you've been living in a Solo-Operated  Concealed Underwater Nuclear Kill-pod at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, on a multi-year tour of du - no, hang on, that was Mega-City One, wasn't it?  So it hasn't happened yet - ignore those last paragraphs.

Art!  You're giving the future away!

     Where were we?  Oh yes - 'Red Dwarf'.  It may interest you to know that the eponymous mining ship itself appears to be a model or variety of a Bussard Ramjet.  Art (quickly, change subjects)!

Note the ramscoop

     That big thing at the front is intended to electromagnetically scoop up hydrogen from the depths of outer space, and use it as fuel.  That way you don't need to carry very much with you.  Neat, eh?
     Where were we?
     Oh yes, Arnold J. Rimmer, the butt of everyone's jokes, and deservedly so.  The man is a consummate plonker, with no redeeming features.  None!

Beloathed by all

     "Hang on, Conrad, if he's that much of a bumbletuck, how come he's got that 'Space Pioneer' credit?" I hear you ask.
     Pausing only to wonder that you do not mock or criticise me - are you going soft or just mellow after a realllllly big takeaway? - I shall propound. 

<hang on - quotidian balneomaniacs of epistolarian effulgency> okay, we'll come back to that.

     The relevant bit is that he was a member of the Seventh Day Advent Hoppists (or his parents were, which is close enough for BOOJUM! and our shoddy editorial standards).  They hopped everywhere.  Hop Hop Hop.  Lots of hops.

Art!  You bafoon!  That's twice in one post and you know what that means -
<atom-powered Tazer begins charging>

     If we leap back in time,** to the present day, allow me to introduce a Japanese rocket mission to investigate an asteroid, that rocket being Hayabusa-2 and the asteroid being 162173 Ryugu (as there are so, so many Ryugus out there - er - perhaps).  Art?

"Hay there!"

     That there is the probe itself, which is due to drop several separate instrument packages onto Ryugu from a bus known as 'Minerva'.  The Minerva sub-units are intended to rove about the surface of the asteroid, by - 
     Hopping.
     Yes, that's right.  These 'Rovers' have an internal spun weight that allows them to manoeuvre repeatedly to reposition themselves and take new readings at different locations.  Or, being succint, by hopping.  Art?

Poetry something in motion.

     There is also another larger instrument package called 'Mascot' which is also able to move from it's original placement by hopping - but only the once <sad face>.
     So there you have it:  how the noble and splendid Arnold Judas Rimmer clearly inspired a generation of Japanese sci-fi geeks into becoming space-explorers!
     Of course, I may be over-thinking this a bit ...

"Foundation" By Isaac Asimov
It is many decades since I last read what is probably one of the defining works of Space Opera, and I'm surprised at how chatty it is, with lots of dialogue between folks in between smashing solar systems to bits with miles-long battlecruisers.  Art?

Central mover and shaker Hari Seldon
(Almost as good at predicting the future as Gerry Anderson)

     One thing that strikes me is how casually the cast of characters use what are described as 'atom blasters', which seem to be hand weapons utilising the forces of nuclear fission, and which seem more suited to demolition work instead of anti-personnel use.  If you shoot someone's left hand with an atom blaster, you'd vapourise the whole of that side of their body.  What about their charcoaled radioactive remains?  Or localised fallout?  Or - are the citizens of the First Empire so inured to atomic weaponry that they are practically immune to it?

CAUTION!
Do not use in confined spaces
Do not use within 150 metres of bystanders
Do not use in the proximity of nuclear power plant
Do not aim upwards
Do not aim downwards
Do not use within a moving vehicle, aircraft, ship or submarine***

Wow, what extended wittering will do for you!  Since we are already at count, I would like to leave you with a nice example of bathos, from "The Rockford Files".  Rocky, Jim's dad, is reading some pulp noir thriller entitled "My Gun Is Deadly" and you hear the dialogue echoing in his head.
     Of course Jim gives this short shrift when he comes home to find such dubious subject matter.
     "Oh really?" he opines.  " 'My Gun Is Deadly'?"  and the carries on.  "His gun is deadly - mine is in the cookie jar."
     Kind of sums it up, really.  Chin chin!

CAUTION!
Can be high in sugar and calorific content

*  Yes, there is one, just vanishingly faint.
**  Do you see what - O you do.
***  You get the picture