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"Why does a creative person create? It's a type of compulsion. I like to explore new ideas."
- Bart Kosko
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| Emergency Lifeboat | ||
| A small craft used as a bail-out vehicle from a large space station or spacecraft. |
| Then, each grasping Clio by an arm, the two officers shoved mightily with their feet, and the three armored forms darted away toward their only hope of escape - an emergency lifeboat that could be launched through the shell of the great globe. To attempt to reach the Hyperion and to escape in one of her lifeboats would have been useless; they could not have forced the great gates of the main airlocks and no other exits existed. |
| Technovelgy from Triplanetary,
by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Published by Not known in 1934 Additional resources -
|
There are other, earlier references in sf to a "lifeship" that serves this same purpose. In 1946, John MacDougal wrote about it in "Chaos, Coordinated"; there is an even earlier mention in 1940, from Harry Walton's "Moon of Exile".
Take a look at Larry Niven's crash web to protect yourself from deceleration trauma.
Compare to the escapecraft from The Ethical Equations (1945) by Murray Leinster, the
emergency space-boat from Revolt of the Star Men (1932) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the escape pod from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas, the survival bubble from Footfall (1985) by Niven & Pournelle, the life tubes from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson and the life ship from The Invisible World by Ed Earl Repp.
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
