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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Self-Sealing Plastic | ||
| Transparent sheeting with a layer of material that would flow to staunch tiny leaks. |
| But the wide roof was all the way up, now—intact. It made a great, squarish bubble, the skin of which [a 'transparent, wire-strengthened plastic '] was specially treated to stop the hard and dangerous part of the ultra-violet rays of the sun, and also the lethal portion of the cosmic rays.
It even had an inter-skin layer of gum that could seal the punctures that grain-of-sand-sized meteors might make. But meteors, though plentiful in the asteroid belt, were curiously innocuous. They all moved in much the same direction as the large asteroids, and at much the same velocity—so their relative speed had to be low. |
| Technovelgy from Asteroid of Fear,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Planet Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to alpha inserts from Exiles of the Moon (1931) by Schachner and Zagat, quartzite leak foil from The Great Dome of Mercury (1932) by Leo Zagat and plastifoam from Collision Orbit (1941) by Jack Williamson.
Another way to plug holes in spacecraft or other constructions in space is to bring some other material to put in place over the hole. Consider the quartzite leak foil from The Great Dome of Mercury (1932) by Leo Zagat, tag-along balloons from Gentlemen, Be Seated (1948) by Robert Heinlein, leak disks from Islands in the Sky (1952) by Arthur C. Clarke and plug-ups from Passage at Arms (1985) by Glen Cook.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Asteroid of Fear
More Ideas
and Technology by Raymond Z. Gallun
Tech news articles related to Asteroid of Fear
Tech news articles related to works by Raymond Z. Gallun
Self-Sealing Plastic-related
news articles:
- Self-Repairing Aircraft Mimic Borg Cubes
- Bendable, Self-Healing Concrete
- Smart, Self-Healing Hydrogels
- Self-Healing Materials - Microencapsulated or Microvascular
- Self-Healing Polymer Works Without Catalyst
- Living Concrete Repairs Itself
- Self-Healing Materials For Spacecraft
- Self-Adapting Composite Heals Itself
- Self-Healing Circuits From Carnegie Mellon
- Self-Healing Material Pulls Carbon Out Of The Air
- RUSSE Self-Healing Plastic Works Underwater
| 'Mooncrete' Lunar Regolith Concrete (LRC) |
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
