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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker
 |
| 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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Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
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| Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn |
| Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail? |
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'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
