Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first
published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a
thirty-mile-long cylindrical alien starship that passes through
Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a
group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to
unlock its mysteries. The "Rama" of the title is the starship,
which is initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the
Hindu deity Rama. (By the 22nd century, we are told, scientists
have run out of Greek and Roman mythological figures to name
astronomical bodies after.) The nature and purpose of the starship
and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book.
The book was meant to be a stand-alone, although the final
sentence of the book hinted that there would be at least two
sequels:
And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one
how he had woken from a restless sleep with the message from his
subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything
in threes.
Clarke, however, denied that this sentence was meant to hint at
the continuity of the story - according to his foreword in the
book's sequel, it was just a good way to end the book.
The initial search program that detects Rama in the first two
chapters of the book, Project Spaceguard, is a program to detect
near-Earth objects on Earth-impact trajectories. It was initiated
after a fictional disastrous asteroid strikes Italy on September
11, 2077, destroying Padua and Verona and sinking Venice. A real
Spaceguard project, named after the project in Rendezvous, was
initiated some years later. After interest in the dangers of
asteroid strikes was heightened by a series of Hollywood disaster
films, the United States Congress gave NASA authorization and
funding to support Spaceguard.
Following in the footsteps of Commander William Norton and his
crew, you must solve for the coordinates using a code that is used
by certain inhabitants of the Rama spacecraft: N 35 56.012 W
137 33.341
Good luck and have fun!!