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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
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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
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space |
| Warp Drive Tech Back On The Menu |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
