Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Science fiction has gotten more accurate as we've gotten closer to the present, because science fiction stories have not only attracted, but also generated current scientists."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Triple Airlock | ||
| Special device to protect against extremely corrosive atmospheres. |
What happens when something even worse than the mere absence of air lies outside your space ship?
| No human had ever set foot on the surface, or breathed the air, of Niflheim. To have done so would have been instant death; the air was a mixture of free fluorine and fluoride gasses, the soil was metallic fluorides, damp with acid rains, and the river was pure hydrofluoric acid. Even the ordinary spacesuit would have been no protection; the glass and rubber and plastic would have disintegrated in a matter of minutes. People came to Niflheim, and worked the mines and uranium refineries and chemical plants, but they did so inside power-driven and contragravity-lifted armor, and they lived on artificial satellites two thousand miles off-planet. This vehicle, for instance, was built and protected as no spaceship ever had to be, completely insulated and entered only through a triple airlock—an outer lock, which would be evacuated outward after it was closed, a middle lock kept evacuated at all times, and an inner lock, evacuated into the interior of the vehicle before the middle lock could be opened. Niflheim was worse than airless, much worse. |
| From Uller Uprising,
by H. Beam Piper. Published by Twayne Publishers in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the very early double-door vestibule from John Jacob Astor IV's A Journey in Other Worlds (1894) and the more conventional airlock from Doc Smith's Skylark of Space (1928). Also, see the pressure curtain from Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's eye (1974).
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Uller Uprising
More Ideas
and Technology by H. Beam Piper
Tech news articles related to Uller Uprising
Tech news articles related to works by H. Beam Piper
| Negative Matter Fluid Theorized In New Paper |
| Grow Structures Upon Planetfall - Myco-Architecture |
| A Look Back At Apollo's Emergency Escape Vehicle |
| Amazing Kepler Space Telescope Decommissioned By NASA |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
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.
|
'Of course, being negative matter, when you push it, it comes toward you..'
'They'll also start pulling in gases and liquids from the local atmosphere...'
'The plastex swam and whirled like boiling toothpaste...'
'The object is built up of an infinite series of plane layers, at the focus of the ray...'
'... the computing mechanisms that studied and restructured the incoming material.'
'... an instrument having relatively small bit pieces adapted to be gripped between the teeth.'
'A procession of automatic ore carts was racing over the bleak slag'
'The cab was an egg-shaped bubble of light metals and plastics...'
Don't you want to experience the 'feely' effects?
