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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Blast-Off | ||
| The act of firing a rocket into space. |
As far as I know, this is the earliest use of this dramatic expression.
| Jay's staccato report met me, from the speaker disc above the gauge-board. "All tight, sir." Just as in the years when I taught him the secrets of the void.
"Make it so, mister," I acknowledged in the unforgotten jargon. "Stand by for the blast-off." Not for nothing had I conned the plans of this latest product of the spaceship engineers, assuaging nostalgia in vicarious flight. |
| Technovelgy from The Cavern of the Shining Pool,
by Leo Zagat. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Zagat also includes use of the phrase as a verb, if only in the past tense:
The Luna's hatch shut him from my sight. The great craft blasted-off from Earth.
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and Technology from The Cavern of the Shining Pool
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Tech news articles related to works by Leo Zagat
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
