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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Spacecraft Ejection Seat | ||
| An ejection seat for spacecraft, to be used in the event of problems during launch. |
This is a relatively early mention of the idea of an ejection seat for a spacecraft.
| "Look, Joe! We checked everything last night. We checked it again this morning. I even caught Mike polishing the ejection seats, because there wasn't anything else to make sure of!"
Joe managed a smile. The ejection seats were assuredly the most unlikely of all devices to be useful today. They were supposedly life-saving devices. If the ship came a cropper on take-off, the four of them were supposed to use ejection-seats like those supplied to jet pilots. They would be thrown clear of the ship and ribbon-parachutes might open and might let them land alive. But it wasn't likely. Joe had objected to their presence. If a feather dropped to Earth from a height of 600 miles, it would be falling so fast when it hit the atmosphere that it would heat up and burn to ashes from pure air-friction. It wasn't likely that they could get out of the ship if anything went wrong. |
| Technovelgy from Space Tug,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Belmont in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Ejection seats for aircraft were first used in Germany in 1938; they were perfected during the second world war. As far as I know, the only ejection seats formally designed and used in spacecraft were installed in the Soviet Vostok craft and the American Gemini craft. (See a picture of the Vostok spacecraft ejection seat.)
The earliest flights of the Space Shuttle also had installed ejector seats; these were removed to make room for more crew.
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More Ideas
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and Technology by Murray Leinster
Tech news articles related to Space Tug
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Spacecraft Ejection Seat-related
news articles:
- Launch-Abort Motor For NASA: The Next Generation
| Beautiful Visualization of Dawn Spacecraft |
| Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars |
| Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris |
| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
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