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"Beyond a thousand years from now humans are not quite recognizably human, and I have trouble finding characters."
- Larry Niven
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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
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More Ideas
and Technology from Edison's Conquest of Mars
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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
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
