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"SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future."
- Gregory Benford
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| Gravity Centrifuge | ||
| Used in low gravity environments to build up muscle for visits to Earth, or other high gravity worlds. |
An early reference to this idea in science fiction.
| Pete hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I feel as if I were wading in quicksand up to my neck. Every move is an effort." "Gee, that's too bad! Just what is the surface gravity on Ganymede? About one-third V isn't it?" "Thirty-two per cent. Or from my point of view, everything here weighs three times as much as it ought to. Including me." Matt nodded. "As if two other guys were riding on you, one on your shoulders, and one on your back." "That's about it. The worst of it is, my feet hurt all the time. I'll get over it-" "Sure you will! "-since. I'm of Earth ancestry and potentially just as strong as my grandfather was. Back home, I'd been working out in the centrifuge the last couple of earth-years. I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. There's Oscar." Matt greeted Oscar, then hurried to his room to phone his father in private. |
| Technovelgy from Space Cadet,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Scribner's Sons in 1948 Additional resources -
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Compare to the Gravity-Simulator Harness from Murray Leinster's 1953 novel Space Tug.
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| Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Fiction |
| NASA Moonbase Update |
| The Solar Oberth Slingshot |
| 'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...' |
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Science Fiction
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
