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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
 |
| Air Tank Flying | ||
| Using little blasts of compressed air to fly around inside a space station. |
| And nearly buckled against
the wall was that contrivance little Skeptsky liked to fool
with, here in the center of the disk where even artificial
gravity was negligible little compressed-air tanks that
he strapped to his shoulders, with rocket-nozzles attached. He could fly lightly all about the place, and did,
explaining blandly that he was practising at being an
angel.
It was horribly lonely in the vast open space that was supposed to be a recreation-center and observatory, where weight was non-existent. |
| Technovelgy from The Power Planet,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Another excerpt:
I am practising at being an angel, he observed placidly. When that war-rocket gets here, a little practice
should come in handy. I have lived a highly moral life,
you see...
He reached over his shoulder, opened the pet-cocks
of his compressed-air tanks, and soared lightly away in
the vast room in which nothing had any weight. He
looked very strange, swooping lightly here and there in
the vast gravitationless room. Two hundred feet by two
hundred feet by six hundred, was the size of the general
observatory. The size of a twenty-story building in
height, and the same width, and two or more city blocks
in length. And all the walls were floors, and the chairs
had thigh-grips in them to hold a man down when he
sat, lest he float away from the force of an incautious
gesture...
Now and then there were little
thumps as Skeptsky landed lightly upon one of the walls
which was also a floor, and maneuvered himself about
to fly again with the quite incredible flying apparatus,
which would work nowhere else save in this one monster
room.
Compare to the levitators from Lost City of Mars (1934) by Harl Vincent, the Dragonfly sky-bike from Rendezvous With Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke and the bat wings from Limits by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
It was little Skeptsky, flying lightly about the two-hundred-foot room where nothing had any weight. He
had the compressed-air tanks strapped to his shoulders
with those astoundingly efficient nozzles that are used
in a larger form by space-rockets themselves. He
could fly, here, with a propulsive force of a few ounces
only. He landed lightly beside them.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Power Planet
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| SpaceX EVA Spacesuit Tested By Polaris Dawn Crew |
| ESA To Build Moon Bases Brick By Printed LEGO Brick |
| FLOAT Levitating Train On The Moon ala Clarke |
| SpaceX Intros Extravehicular Activity Suit |
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
