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"I operate by a code that makes me responsible for what I do, makes me definitely, directly, genuinely responsible. I am precisely the kind of person I made myself out to be."
- Harlan Ellison
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Up-and-Down Orientation |
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Designed and constructed as if gravity were a factor. |
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There are probably earlier descriptions of this, but this is the oldest direct reference I know about, in science fiction.
Stevens trailed after Grimes as one fish might follow another, while taking in with his eyes as much of Waldo’s fabulous house as he could see. The place was certainly unique, he conceded to himself, unlike anything he had ever seen. It completely lacked up-and-down orientation. Space craft, even space stations, although always in free fall with respect to any but internally impressed accelerations, invariably are designed with up-and-down; the up-and-down axis of a ship is determined by the direction of its accelerating drive; the up-and-down of a space station is determined by its centrifugal spin.
Some few police and military craft use more than one axis of acceleration; their up-and-down shifts therefore and their personnel must be harnessed when the ship maneuvers. Some space stations apply spin only to living quarters. Nevertheless the rule is general; human beings are used to weight; all their artifacts have that assumption implicit in their construction — except Waldo’s house.
It is hard for a groundhog to dismiss the notion of weight. We seem to be born with an instinct which demands it. If one thinks of a vessel in a free orbit around the Earth, one is inclined to think of the direction toward the Earth as “down,” to think of oneself as standing or sitting on that wall of the ship, using it as a floor. Such a concept is completely mistaken. To a person inside Waldo’s home had been constructed without any consideration being given to up-anddown. Furniture and apparatus were affixed to any wall; there was no “floor.” Decks and platforms were arranged at any convenient angle and of any size or shape, since they had nothing to do with standing or walking. Properly speaking, they were bulkheads and working surfaces rather than decks. Furthermore, equipment was not necessarily placed close to such surfaces; frequently it was more convenient to locate it with space all around it, held in place by light guys or slender stanchions. |
Technovelgy from Waldo,
by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1942
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