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
 |
Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again?
This amazing video popped up in my twitter, sorry, X feed this past week and reminded me just how big Skylab really was. It was recorded in 1973, and shows Alan Bean reveling in weightlessness.
Astronaut Alan Bean enjoying weightlessness in the open space of the orbital workshop on the Skylab space station in 1973. pic.twitter.com/h3IniLVyXU
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) October 22, 2025
Fans of the 1985 novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card may recall the vast battleroom used for training.
They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side. Null gravity was frightening, disorienting; they soon found that things went better if they didn't use their feet at all.
Much earlier, Murray Leinster describes an interior space sometimes used for recreation in his 1931 story The Power Planet:
The observation-room was vast. Two hundred feet across and high, and six hundred feet wide, and practically without a ceiling. All four walls were floor. Here was the center of the Power Planet. Here were the largest of all the ports which look out upon the appalling emptiness which surrounds it. Here, too, were the doors into the needle-like spires which show on all the pictures of the Power Planet — those two-thousand-foot shafts which jut out from its exact center. From the shaft on the sunward side, one may look out over the whole of the bright-side disk. And from the spire on the shadow side one sees exactly nothing, unless the monster searchlights are turned on. They will illuminate the dark side to its farthest edge, though, and are used in case of needed repairs to the outer skin. From the dark-side spire the only thing which shows that the blackness of the disk is not nothingness itself is that faintly luminous streak of pure Power, a hundred yards across, which goes stabbing across illimitable space to the spinning Earth, far-distant...(Read more about the Observation Room Recreation Center.)
George O. Smith describes a similar space in the center of the Venus Equilateral Relay Station in his 1942 story QRM: Interplanetary:
Channing looked up the little flight of stairs that led to the innermost level. He winked at Arden and jumped. He passed up through the opening easily. “Jump,” he commanded. “Don’t use the stairs!”
(Center space from 'QRM: Interplanetary' by George O. Smith)Arden jumped. She sailed upward, and as she passed through the opening, Channing caught her by one arm and stopped her flight. “At that speed you’d go right on across,” he said.
She looked up, and there about two hundred feet overhead she could see the opposite wall.
Channing snapped on the lights. They were in a room two hundred feet in diameter and three hundred feet long. “We’re at the center of the station,” Channing informed her. “Beyond that bulkhead is the air lock. On the other side of the other bulkhead, we have the air plants, the storage spaces, and several cubic inches of machinery.”
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/27/2025)
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 ")
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...'
Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri
'This was their world, their planet —
this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.' - Nat Schachner, 1934
The First Space Warship For Space Force
'Each of the electrical ships carried about twenty men...' - Garrett P. Serviss, 1898.
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
The Zapata Air Scooter Would Be Great In A Science Fiction Story
'Betty's slapdash style.'
Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype)
There are no orbiting Michelin stars. Yet.
Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries?
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.'
Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
Is It Time To Forbid Human Driving?
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
Replace The Smartphone With A Connected Edge Node For AI Inference
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
Robot Guard Dog On Duty
I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.
Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
Google's Nano Banana Pro Presents Handwritten Math Solutions
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
Edible Meat-Like Fungus Like Barbara Hambly's Slunch?
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
Sunday Robotics 'Memo' Bot Has Unique Training Glove
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
'Men are made of protoplasm... Lasts forever.'
Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
