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"Retire? Yeah, I want to die with my head in the typewriter. That's my idea of retirement."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Reaction Pistol | ||
| A hand-held device for maneuvering in zero gravity in a space suit. |
Before venturing untethered out of your space ship to rendezvous with a planetoid, or perhaps rescue a floating comrade a few dozen feet away, you'll want a way to maneuver in zero gravity. Perhaps help lies in Newton's third law of motion - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
| "...Miss Wingate, watching at the port, saw you drift away from the ship, and when we turned about to get you she insisted on going out after you. She slipped on a space suit, grabbed a reaction pistol and found you floating unconscious. Plucky girl." |
| Technovelgy from Martian Guns,
by Stanley D. Bell. Published by Wonder Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
Gordon A. Giles also mentions this idea in his 1937 story Diamond Planetoid:
Compare this method of moving between objects in space with the spring-loaded broomstick from Arthur C. Clarke's 1952 story Islands in the Sky, Personal Jet Thrust from Robert Heinlein's 1948 novel Space Cadet and Electrical Tether from Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 story Edison's Conquest of Mars.
Compare also to the steering shot pistol from The Shot Into Infinity (1929) by Otto Willi Gail, the emergency repulsion ray from Earth-Venus 12 (1936) by Gabriel Wilson, the metal solvent ray thrower from Lost Rocket (1941) by Manly Wade Wellman, the propulsion gun from Venus Mines, Incorporated (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the Pistol 'Rocket' (1931) from Buck Rogers: 2430 AD (1931) by Nowlan and Calkin.
He... shuffled toward the lock. In another minute he had passed out of Welton's sight, to reappear a moment later from the side port. Little spurts of red-orange flame from the reaction pistol marked his companion's trail to the planetoid thirty feet away.
((Reaction Pistol from 'Diamond Planetoid' by Gordon A. Giles)
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Martian Guns
More Ideas
and Technology by Stanley D. Bell
Tech news articles related to Martian Guns
Tech news articles related to works by Stanley D. Bell
Reaction Pistol-related
news articles:
- The Manned Maneuvering Unit Story
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
| SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space |
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'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life... in his hands.'
'My homeland is being threatened by the Replicators. Thus far all attempts to stop them have failed.'
'A robobus had just rolled up to the curb.'
'And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.'
'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.'
