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MIT Proposes Space Bubbles To Combat Climate Change, Misses The Point Of Space Bubbles
Eager geoengineers at MIT have proposed saving the Earth with an extensive raft of space bubbles. They've figured out how to blow bubbles in space.
(Space Bubbles in Outer Space Conditions)
A vast deflective raft of bubbles would be placed at the lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun.
(Space Bubbles deflection raft at Lagrangian Point)
MIT scientists believe that they can deflect about 1.8 percent of incident solar radiation from hitting the Earth, saving the planet.
However, every good science fiction fan knows that bubbles aren't (just) for saving the Earth - they're for living in!
In science fiction author Fritz Leiber's 1961 story The Beat Cluster, he describes inflatable living globes suitable for human habitation in space!
('The Beat Cluster' by Fritz Leiber)
The Big Igloo, as the large living-Globe was more often called, was not really made of glass. It was sealingsilk, a cheap flexible material almost as transparent as fused silica and ten thousand times tougher—quite tough enough to hold a breathable pressure of air in the hard vacuum of space.“Beyond the spherical wall loomed the other and somewhat smaller balloons of the Beat Cluster, connected to each other and to the Big Igloo by three-foot-diameter cylindrical tunnels of “triple-strength tinted sealingsilk. In them floated or swam about an assemblage of persons of both sexes in informal dress and undress and engaged in activities suitable to freefall...”
(Read and see more pictures of inflatable living globes)
Sounds like fun, right?
This idea was suggested that very same year by Golden Age great Raymond Z Gallun in his classic novel The Planet Strappers; see the entry for space bubbles (bubbs).
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/11/2022)
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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