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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
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| Gravograph | ||
| A graphical representation of gravitational fields. |
Approaching the Sargasso of space, an area of space where the gravitational influences of the planets cancel each other out, the ship's crew monitor the situation with their gravograph.
| On the third ship-day Kent and Captain Crain stood in the pilot-house behind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket-tube controls. Their eyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on it that represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright red circle that stood for the dead-area....
They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's red line, heading toward its center. "Well, we're in at last," Kent commented. "There seems to be no change in anything, either." Crain pointed to the instrument-panel. "Look at the gravitometers." Kent did. "All dead! No gravitational pull from any direction—no, that one shows a slight attraction from ahead!" "Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead-area after all!" Liggett exclaimed. "You don't understand," said Crain. "That attraction from ahead is the pull of the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center." "And it's pulling the Pallas toward it?" Kent exclaimed. Crain nodded. "We'll probably reach the wreck-pack in two more ship-days." |
| Technovelgy from The Sargasso of Space,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Astounding Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Read the discussion of weightlessness in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, and see how he was the first to describe the idea of planetary gravities canceling each other out (in fiction, anyway).
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
