Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

 

Untethered Spacewalk's 50th Anniversary

NASA Astronaut Bruce McCandless II, flew the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) out of the space shuttle Challenger’s payload bay for the first time on February 7, 1984, during the STS-41B mission in 1984.


(The first untethered spacewak)

As far as I know, the term "space walk" was first used in science fiction (and maybe anywhere) in 1939, in Moon Heaven by Dom Passante:

But that space walk of mine wasn't so very amazing. I've lived here all my life, and like a swimmer who can accustom himself to long periods under water, so have I, by occasional jaunts to the plateau, accustomed myself to void conditions.
(Read more about space walk)

The first description of an untethered (or tethered) spacewalk was probably in Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), by Garrett P. Serviss, published by New York Evening Journal in 1898.

Update 04-Apr-2024: Here's another version of the untethered spacewalk, this time with a grim reminder of the inexorable nature of Newton's laws of motion. This is from Between Earth and Moon, by Otfrid von Hanstein, published by Wonder Stories Quarterly in 1930:

Quickly he opened the outer door of the airlock. Now he felt just as he had once before, as a student aviator, when he had jumped out of his burning plane at a dizzy height, not knowing whether his parachute would open or not.

Nothing happened. Hesitantly he stepped outside. He had to push himself away from the rocket with his hand he remained floating motionlessly outside.

He hung the iron hook at the end of the rope on a ring on the outside of the rocket and looked about him.

He was unwilling to think; he forced his mind not to take in where he was. He would not remember that the earth lay one hundred and eighty thousand kilometers down below him...

He looked about, and at this moment his vision dimmed and his heart nearly stopped beating...

Now the most frightful thing possible had happened.

Egon was perfectly motionless. The gas container was empty. But the rope which connected him with the rocket was no longer fastened to the latter. Probably the impulse of the writing machine had sufficed to free the hook from the ring. The rope was floating freely in the air, and the rocket was at least twenty meters from the end of it.


(From Between Earth and Moon by Otfrid von Hanstein)

He tried to make swimming motions. Of course it was in vain. He encountered no resistance. He simply lost his equilibrium and had trouble in floating back into it.

The rocket was apparently standing still, but he was moving, to a degree hardly perceptible, more and more away from it. He could not understand how in this moment of the most fearful certainty of death he could think so calmly.

It was quite clear to him what had happened. He, the only person in a diving suit, a hundred and eighty thousand kilometers above the earth, had become a third satellite...

Silently the rocket, the new satellite of the earth, sped on its newly formed orbit. Before it went the tiniest of all bodies in the universe, the grain of dust in space — the living being, still protected from the cold of space by his diving suit, with his lungs still breathing the remnants of the oxygen in the cylinder, his senses still alert, going to meet death with open eyes.

End update.

Update 11-May-2024: I should add that the Manned Maneuvering Unit was anticipated by the self-propulsive space suit described in Bluff of the Hawk (1930)


(From The self-propulsive suit from The Bluff of the Hawk) by Anthony Gilmore:

They had quite a considerable range:

Clad as they were in the latter's self-propulsive space-suits, they were quite capable of reaching Jupiter's Satellite III, only some thirty thousand miles away.

End update.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/30/2024)

Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.

| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |

Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here.

Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )

Related News Stories - (" Space Tech ")

Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
'That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part.' - Cordwainer Smith, 1960.

The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.' - Harl Vincent, 1931.

Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again?
'They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side.' - Orson Scott Card, 1985.

Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'

 

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Current News

Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
'That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part.'

Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.

Rogue AI Replicated Itself
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'

HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'

Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'

When AI Takes Its First Breath
Any suggestions?

Chinese Aircar Light And Airy, Not For Blade Runners
Daytime version.

The Morphing Wheel And The Smartwheel
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'

Transporting Antimatter
'...drawing plans for the magnetic tongs and bed plates and relays.'

Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus
'He wrote on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger...'

I Wish This Plaudit Pin Was More Like A Wristpad
'Frank was cursing into his wristpad, switching between Arabic and English.'

World's Largest Teleoperated Arm
'...a pair so huge that Stevens could not conceive a use for it..'

Japan's AI Buddharoid Automonks
'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'

MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'

The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'

California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'

More SF in the News Stories

More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories

Home | Glossary | Invention Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.