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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

Inertia Tank  
  A device that protected its delicate contents by cushioning.  

When flying back from the Moon, Brand Fanshaw needed every possible advantage to land safely. Just in case - he was in his inertia tank.

The tank... was cylindrical. It's walls were light-weight, triple-layered steel, fitted with vacuum compartments to keep heat out, and braced every which way in their internal structure, to make them as strong as possible.

There was gelatin in the tank; stiff, clear gelatin... the principle of the tank wasn't complicated. It surrounded whatever it was meant to protect with a soft, flexible, shock-absorbing semifluid cushion.

Technovelgy from Masson's Secret, by Raymond Z. Gallun.
Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1939
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