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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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| Airtight Tent | ||
| A temporary structure for living on an airless moon or asteroid. |
You've just homesteaded an asteroid, and you've been left there with your family. The first requirement: shelter, of course.
| Inside his space suit, he had begun to sweat furiously. And it was more because of the tension of his nerves than because of the vigor with which he plied his pinchbar, doing the first task which had to be done. Steel ribbons were snapped, nails were yanked silently from the great box, boards were jerked loose.
In another minute John Endlich and his wife were setting up an airtight tent, which, when the time came, could be inflated from compressed-air bottles. They worked somewhat awkwardly, for their instruction period had been brief, and they were green; but the job was speedily finished. The first requirement—shelter—was assured. |
| Technovelgy from Asteroid of Fear,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Planet Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
|
What would it be like to spend your first night in an airtight tent on an asteroid with your family? Gallun uses his imagination to help us imagine it:
Peering from the small plastic windows of the tent, he kept watching for hulking black shapes to silhouette themselves against the stars...
Otherwise, from all around, the stillness of the vacuum was absolute.
Compare this to the Igloo Inflatable Moon Habitat from Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust and the synthetic spider silk inflatable roof from Robert Heinlein's 1939 story Misfit.
In another minute the small but dazzling sun had disappeared behind the broken mountains, as Vesta, unspherical and malformed, tumbled rather than rotated on its center of gravity. And several hours later, amid heavy cooking odors inside the now inflated plastic bubble that was the tent, Endlich was sprawled on his stomach, unable, through well-founded worry, even to remove his space suit or to allow his family to do so, though there was breathable air around them. They lay with their helmet face-windows open.
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- The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module Attached to ISS
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
