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"It is change ... that is the dominant factor in society today... the world as it will be. This means that ... every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.""
- Isaac Asimov
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| Igloo-Shaped Space Shelter | ||
| Easy to set up on airless asteroids. |
I think this is the earliest expression of this excellent idea.
| By the time they returned to the little polar cup, the shelters were pitched - igloo shapes of woven metal, lined with lead foil and self-sealing plastic, fastened down with cables welded to the living iron, and inflated with oxyhelium. Small cylindrical airlocks gave entrance. Standing at the end of a short taut cable, above the crown of each shelter was a small peegee [paragravity] unit. Set to negative polarity, these provided a comfortable pressure against the floor, and some protection against meteor drift... |
| Technovelgy from Collision Orbit,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding in 1942 Additional resources -
|
Here's another detail:
Compare to the plastic igloo from Love Among The Robots (1946) by Emmett McDowell, the Igloo Inflatable Moon Habitat from A Fall of Moondust (1961) by Arthur C. Clarke and the airtight tent from Raymond Z. Gallun's 1951 novella Asteroid of Fear.
...she kept getting up, against her will, to peer out through the tiny lead-glass peepholes in the thick, inflated fabric.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Collision Orbit
More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to Collision Orbit
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
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| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
