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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven
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| Inflatable Air Lock | ||
| Air lock making use of inflatable side walls to achieve large size. |
This is a very early reference to the idea of using inflatable modules of any kind in space, as well as to the idea of using an inflatable air lock.
| The net and the plastic sidewalls were, of course, the method by which a really large airlock was made practical. When this ship was about to take off again, pumps would not labor for hours to pump the air out. The sidewalls would inflate and closely enclose the ship's hull, and so force the air in the lock back into the ship. Then the pumps would work on the air behind the inflated walls—with nets to help them draw the wall-stuff back to let the ship go free. The lock could be used with only fifteen minutes for pumping instead of four hours. |
| Technovelgy from Space Tug,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Belmont in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Apparently, the first-ever spacewalk, by Alexi Leonov in 1965, featured an inflatable airlock. The Voskhod spacecraft itself was far too small for a self-contained airlock, so they made an inflatable one that extended outside the vehicle.
I wonder if the Russians were reading up on American sf, or if there is an earlier source for the idea. Anyone?
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| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
| ISS Plagued By Leak - Again! |
| Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug |
| Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say? |
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't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
