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"No one has ever produced a statement of fact that was technically true. The most accurate statements of science we have today are accurate to only 15 decimal places."
- Bart Kosko
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| Spacewalk | ||
| Going outside your space craft for a short time. |
This is perhaps the first description of a spacewalk, although it doesn't use that word or the phrase "space walk". As far as I know, the first use of the term is in Moon Heaven (1939) by Dom Passante; see space walk.
| As it was, I took good care to retain a hold upon a projecting portion of the car. Occasionally cautiously releasing my grip, I experienced for a few minutes the delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space, with nothing to hold me up and nothing to interfere with my motion.
Mr. Edison, happening to come upon the deck of the ship at this time, and seeing what we were about, at once said: "I must provide against this danger. If I do not, there is a chance that we shall arrive at Mars with the ships half empty and the crews floating helplessly around us."
 (Spacewalk from 'Edison's Conquest of Mars')
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| Technovelgy from Edison's Conquest of Mars,
by Garrett P. Serviss. Published by New York Evening Journal in 1898 Additional resources -
|
Here's another imaginative early description, from Phantom of the Seven Stars by Ray Cummings, published in Planet Stories in 1940:
See also the description for the electrical tether from the same story.
Alone in space; a little drifting world of yourself. It is an eerie feeling. I have no idea how long that descent to Asteroid-9 took; one loses all sense of time as well as space, hurtling alone through the starry universe.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Edison's Conquest of Mars
More Ideas
and Technology by Garrett P. Serviss
Tech news articles related to Edison's Conquest of Mars
Tech news articles related to works by Garrett P. Serviss
Spacewalk-related
news articles:
- Suit Up! Fifty Years Of Spacewalks Video
- It's Spacewalk Sunday, Thanks To The ESA
| SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha |
| NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts |
| Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn |
| Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
