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"If I had to get a new Ph.D. now, I'd get it in polymer engineering - the manipulation of matter."
- Bart Kosko
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| Gravitation Screen | ||
| Shields a spacecraft from the gravity of a planetary body. |
Very early use of this idea.
| The great black hull of the Columbia, with her white-haired captain up forward at his post; and the pitiful unfortunates swarming her decks; the sudden obliteration of the scene as the shutters closed over it was indelibly imprinted on his imagination. There was a turning and grinding of the great motors at the rear of the cradle as they worked the gravitation screens under the vessel, one from the front and one from the rear; then, as the earth's attraction reluctantly gave up its grip on the mighty mass of iron and steel gouged from her own vitals, it slowly rose, level keeled, until its stern butted against the top girders of the cradle. |
| Technovelgy from On The Martian Way,
by Harry Gore Bishop. Published by The Broadway Magazine in 1907 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the more personal gravity web from Frank Herbert's 1969 novel Whipping Star, as well as cavorite from the 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells, the gravity-neutralizing disks from Edmond Hamilton's 1937 short story Fessenden's Worlds and the sleeping plates from Larry Niven's 1966 novella Neutron Star.
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| Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Fiction |
| NASA Moonbase Update |
| The Solar Oberth Slingshot |
| 'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...' |
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
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'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
