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The Space Suit As Personal Spaceship
I really liked this recent tweet, shared by @nyrath, a.k.a. Winchell Chung of Project Rho and Atomic Rockets:
Spacesuits come in all shapes and sizes, but each is really just a personal spaceship. pic.twitter.com/VKzlFqQksi
— Andrew Rader (@marsrader) March 12, 2017
(A recent tweet...)
The idea that the space suit is a personal spaceship is often attributed to Larry Niven, who observed (in At the Bottom of a Hole (1966):
The surface overhead was dotted with hotels, as if the bubbleworld were turning to city. Garner knew it wasn't. Those hotels, and the scattered hotels in the other bubbleworld, served every Belter's occasional need for an Earthlike environment. Belters don't need houses. A Belter's home is the inside of his pressure suit.
(Read more about Bubbleworld)
I found an earlier source in the amazing Salvage in Space, a 1933 short story by Jack Williamson about meteor (asteroid) miners:
He drew his right arm out of the bulging sleeve of the suit, into its ample interior, found a cigarette in an inside pocket, and lighted it. The smoke swirled about in the helmet, drawn swiftly into the air filters."Darn clever, these suits," he murmured. "Food, smokes, water generator, all where you can reach them. And darned expensive, too. I'd better be looking for pay metal!"
(Read more about Osprey space armor)
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