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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Dome Shelter | ||
| A permanent domed structure for living on the Moon. |
As far as I know, this is the earliest description of a permanent lunar habitat that is reasonably accurate, in that it recognizes the harsh, airless environment.
The Moon, with its lack of atmosphere, needed special equipment.
“Johnny Grantline was a close friend of ours. He had organized an exploring expedition to the Moon. Uninhabited, with its bleak, forbidding, airless, waterless surface, the Moon – even though so close to the Earth- was seldom visited. No regular ship ever stopped there. A few exploring parties of recent years had come to grief.
But there was a persistent rumor that upon the Moon, mineral riches of a fabulous wealth were awaiting discovery… (p3)
| And there were humans here now. On this tumbled plain, between Archimedes and the mountains, one small crater amid the million of its fellows was distinguished this night by the presence of humans. The Grantline camp! It huddled in the deepest purple shadows on the side of a bowl-like pit, a crudely circular orifice with a scant two miles across its rippling rim. There was a faint light here to mark the presence of the living intruders. The blue glow radiance of Morrell tube lights under a spread of glassite.
The Grantline camp stood midway up one of the inner cliff walls of the little crater. The broken, rock-strewn floor, two miles wide, lay five hundred feet below the camp. A broad level shelf hung midway up the cliff, and upon it Grantline had built his little group of glassite dome shelters… …within the glassite shelter, a normal Earth pressure must be maintained. Rigidly braced double walls to withstand the explosive tendency, with no external pressure to counteract it… |
| Technovelgy from Brigands of the Moon,
by Ray Cummings. Published by Astounding Stories of Super Science in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Underneath this dome were various smaller buildings, including maintenance equipment to maintain the atmosphere.
The first use of the phrase seems to be in The Last Blast (1952) by Eric Frank Russell:
Of course, if you're lucky enough to discover a Moon Valley with Breathable Atmosphere like the one described in Moon Heaven (1939) by Dom Passante, you're all set.
Compare to the plastic igloo (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1535) from Love Among the Robots by Emmett McDowell.
The day the bombs dropped there were forty-six cores lying outside the Moon-dome.
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and Technology from Brigands of the Moon
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Tech news articles related to Brigands of the Moon
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Dome Shelter-related
news articles:
- 2 Lunar Base Concepts 75 Years Apart
| Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside? |
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
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‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
This is nothing new for science fiction fans!
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
