Explore "Islands of Space" by John W. Campbell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Ancient Mariner was built in the big Transcontinental shops in Newark; the power they needed was not available in the smaller shops.
Working twenty-four hours a day, in three shifts, skilled men took two months to finish the hull according to Fuller's specifications. The huge walls of lux metal required great care in construction, for they could not be welded; they had to be formed in position. And they could only be polished under powerful magnets, where the dense magnetic field softened the lux metal enough to allow a diamond polisher to do the job.