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"I did more research, and realized I almost would rather be a biologist than a writer, because there was incredible stuff going on!"
- Greg Bear
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| Pseudogravity | ||
| Gravity produced by artifice, rather than by a suitably large mass. |
This term was typically used to describe the "gravity" created in a spinning orbital habitat; later, it was extended to other types of artificial gravity.
| Bobo trotted away in the long loping strides permitted by the low pseudogravity near the axis of rotation of the Ship. |
| Technovelgy from Common Sense,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Heinlein uses this idea again in his description of Wheelchair, the orbital home of Waldo F. Jones in the 1942 novella Waldo:
This basic problem of space travel was recognized as early as the 17th century; see the entry for weightlessness in space from The Man in the Moone (1638), by Francis Godwin.
See the entry for city of space from this same work for a more detailed discussion about artificial gravity.
For the first use of the idea see artificial gravity from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings. Published the same year was the artificial gravity system from Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon. See also paragravity from Collision Orbit (1941) by Jack Williamson.
Waldo F. Jones seemed to be floating in thin air at the center of a spherical room. The appearance was caused by the fact that he was indeed floating in air. His house lay in a free orbit, with a period of just over twenty-four hours. No spin had been impressed on his home; the pseudo gravity of centrifugal force was the thing he wanted least. He had left Earth to get away from its gravitational field; he had not been down to the surface once in the seventeen years since his house was built and towed into her orbit; he never intended to do so for any purpose whatsoever.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
