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"...being predictive, being right about the future, is not the point of any given story or novel. The point is about exploring as wide a range of possibilities as possible."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Momentum Screen | ||
| Allows a spacemen to avoid the problem of "high gee" forces on take-off. |
A clever twist on the idea of artificial gravity, or a gravity shield, inside a spacecraft.
| The two wipers jumped to their bunks, threw up a lever and lay down. I followed suit; in a few seconds there was a grinding roar and our beds slid on quadrantal rollers up against the bulkhead. There was a moment of crushing weight and just when I thought I'd never get the strength to draw in another breath, the beds slid back off the bulkhead and were parallel with the floor again. In those days the momentum screens were inoperable inside the Heaviside Layer, and during the few seconds it took to get outside, the acceleration was really rough... |
| From Completely Automatic,
by Theodore Sturgeon. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
The Heaviside layer (also called the Kennelly-Heaviside layer) is a layer of ionized gas that occurs at about 56-93 miles above the earth's surface. It makes possible radio waves that can propagate beyond line-of-sight.
Compare to the gravity screen from Edmond Hamilton's 1929 classic Crashing Suns.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
