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"I think we could solve our problems more easily through strength of character; but that's always been a commodity in extremely short supply."
- Gregory Benford
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| Gravograph | ||
| A graphical representation of gravitational fields. |
Approaching the Sargasso of space, an area of space where the gravitational influences of the planets cancel each other out, the ship's crew monitor the situation with their gravograph.
| On the third ship-day Kent and Captain Crain stood in the pilot-house behind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket-tube controls. Their eyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on it that represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright red circle that stood for the dead-area....
They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's red line, heading toward its center. "Well, we're in at last," Kent commented. "There seems to be no change in anything, either." Crain pointed to the instrument-panel. "Look at the gravitometers." Kent did. "All dead! No gravitational pull from any direction—no, that one shows a slight attraction from ahead!" "Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead-area after all!" Liggett exclaimed. "You don't understand," said Crain. "That attraction from ahead is the pull of the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center." "And it's pulling the Pallas toward it?" Kent exclaimed. Crain nodded. "We'll probably reach the wreck-pack in two more ship-days." |
| Technovelgy from The Sargasso of Space,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Astounding Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Read the discussion of weightlessness in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, and see how he was the first to describe the idea of planetary gravities canceling each other out (in fiction, anyway).
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| The United States Space Academy Is Official |
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
