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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
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| Landing Legs | ||
| Projections from the base of a space craft that allow it to land upright in gravity. |
This is a very early use of the phrase "landing legs" in science fiction, although it was probably a generation old in engineering, particularly for helicopters.
| AS the Suleiman Agate bolted down, as the telescoping landing-legs (the tip of each one being a rotary rock-drill) bit down and fastened solidly in the ground, standing the big ship at ninety degrees straightaway, Jack Ardway made his way up the companionway. The corridor had been the droptube, but it had been shut down to allow more power for the landing thrust. He pulled himself along, slipping and losing his balance, and finally opened the loktite at pilot’s country. |
| Technovelgy from No Planet Is Safe,
by Harlan Ellison. Published by Super Science Fiction in 1958 Additional resources -
|
Another example of this phrase found in A Dish of Devils by James Goddard, published in Science Fantasy in 1964:
Compare to the splashdown from From the Earth to the Moon (1867) by Jules Verne,
landing arms from Creatures of the Comet (1931) by Edmond Hamilton,
landing stage from Atomic Fire (1931) by Raymond Z. Gallun,
landing cradle from The Radium World (1932) by Frank K. Kelly,
landing on an asteroid from Murder on the Asteroid (1933) by Eando Binder,
docking-cradle from They Never Came Back (1941) by Fritz Leiber,
landing-grid from Sand Doom (1955) by Murray Leinster,
landing pit from The Stars My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester and
launching cradle from Needler (1957) by Gordon Randall Garrett.
The noise rose and rose; he could not keep it out even though he kept his hands tight over his ears. The base of the ship started to glow with a brilliant white light, and then the whole structure began to rise slowly from the ground. When it was about a hundred feet up the landing-legs folded in telescopically and the ship shot upwards at such a fantastic speed that Hob’s eye could not follow it, straight over the very pale half-moon that was just clear of the eastern horizon.
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'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.'
