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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Free Fall | ||
| Phrase describing how bodies move in orbit. |
First use of this phrase, as far as I know.
| Since the space ship, with exhausts cut off, was circling freely in space like any ordinary meteor, with no artificial influence to disturb the play of natural forces, the proximity of the moon was no hindrance to leaving the ship.
 ('The Shot into Infinity' by Otto Willi Gail) Kinetic energy and the attraction of the moon determined the motion of the Geryon and forced it into the curved gravitational path — the same forces as operated on the passengers and sought to move them in the same manner. As long as no artificial influence disturbed the dynamic equilibrium, no force drew the men who left the Geryon away from the ship, any more than the walking stick of a man falling from a high mountain has any inclination to leave its possessor during the fall. It remains at an unchanged distance from him, as long as the free fall lasts. The rocket and the Geryon seemed to lie still side by side, just like two express trains running side by side at full speed. A passenger on one express can shake hands out of the window with a passenger on the other. He can bridge the gap between the two trains with a board and pass from one train to the other. Nothing but the current of air, the road bed rushing away behind, and the noise of the rolling wheels would remind him that the whole system is in motion. Relatively to the rocket, the Geryon was motionless, and relatively to the Geryon, the passengers leaving it would float motionless in space. |
| Technovelgy from The Shot Into Infinity,
by Otto Willi Gail. Published by Science Wonder Quarterly in 1929 Additional resources -
|
Another noted early use can be found in Islands of Space by John W. Campbell:
See also zero g from Islands in the Sky (1952) by Arthur C. Clarke.
Since they were to use the space control, though, they would be subject to infinite acceleration, it would be a free fall, and Fuller would remain helplessly weightless.
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'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
