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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Bubble Armor Space Suit | ||
| Steel bubble-shaped space suit. |
| Enclosed in a steel bubble of suit-armor, he presently propelled himself to the lock.
Gingerly, he floated up to and through the opening, rather like a small balloon of greenish steel-alloy in his bulky armor.
 (Bubble Space Armor from 'Agent of Vega' by James Schmitz) A wash of corrosive atomic fire splashed blindingly off the front of his armor as he appeared in the control-room door -- through it twin narrow-beam tractor rays came ramming in reversed, brain-jarring thrusts at his face-piece. He drove quickly into the room and let the tractors slam him back against the wall. They could not harm him The fire was different. For perhaps a minute, his armor could continue to absorb it, but no longer. A stubby tentacle on the front of his chest armor now raised a shielded projectile gun and sprayed the top of the desk beyond which U-1 crouched with a mushrooming, adhesive blanket of incendiaries. |
| Technovelgy from Agent of Vega,
by James Schmitz. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1949 Additional resources -
|
Here's an actual device - the Romano undersea robot - from Modern Mechanix (1935):
The Romano undersea robot, recognized by many authorities as one of the greatest advancements in deep sea operation history, has a pear-shaped shell capable of withstanding water pressure at depths of 5,000 feet. It has two arms nine feet long, strong enough to lift half a ton, and yet adjustable enough to pick up a small coin. There are powerful lights that can pierce the water for a hundred feet.
Oxygen for the operator is supplied by an apparatus inside the sphere working in conjunction with an air purifier.
Compare to the cylinder space suit from Islands of the Sky (1952) by Arthur C. Clarke.
Compare to these other early space suit references;
the air-tight suit from Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) by Garrett P. Serviss, the pneumatic suit from The Shot into Infinity (1929) by Otto Willi Gail, the space suit from The Emperor of the Stars (1931) by Schachner and Zagat, the altitude suit from The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, the Osprey Space Armor from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson, the space overalls from Lost Rocket (1941) by Manly Wade Wellman and the space bubble from The Planet Strappers (1961) by Raymond Z. Gallun.
(Romano undersea diving robot)
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| Russia Working On Military Exoskeletons |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
