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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Photograph of Earth from Space | ||
| An aerial photograph from outside the atmosphere. |
The first description of this that I've ever read. Also, it is the first use of satellite photography for reconnaissance that I know about.
| "I have a color photograph here."
Bill studied it, saw that it looked like an aerial photograph of a vast stretch of mountain and desert, a monotonous expanse of gray, tinged with green and red. A photograph, taken from space, of part of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. And see!" He pointed to a little blue disk in the green-gray expanse of a plain, just below a narrow mountain ridge, with the fine green line that marked a river just beside it. "That blue circle is the first ship that came..." |
| Technovelgy from The Prince of Space,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
The first actual pictures of the Earth from space were taken on March 7, 1947:
Mengel conducted upper atmosphere experiments by launching the rockets into near-earth orbit. He designed and fabricated the first research nose shell to replace of the V-2 warhead and began placing cameras in the nose shell.
Science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul drew this illustration for "The Voyage of the Asteroid", a story by Laurence Manning, published in Wonder Stories Quarterly in 1932.
...a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful in these grainy black-and-white-photos - the first pictures of Earth as seen from altitude greater than 100 miles in space. Just the year before in 1946, scientists like John T. Mengel, a NASA pioneer who later oversaw the Vanguard Program, began experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets.
(The hidden side of earth's satellite)
See also the story The Far Side Of The Moon, By NASA (2015) And By PAUL (1932).
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
