United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They were typical landing craft, shaped like rectangular boxes. There was no need for streamlining in the vacuum of space. They were not pressurized. Only men in space suits rode in the ungainly boxes. He checked all blast tubes to make sure they were clear. There were small single tubes on each side of the craft. A clogged one could explode and blow the boat up.
"No matter how altruistic you may be about it, you get man to the point that he doesn't depend on atmospheric oxygen here, and domes, pressurized houses and groundcars, oxygen equipment a great many things are going to be unnecessary. But there'll still be a lot of other things we'll have to have from Earth.
Inside the pressurized passenger cab, Tom gripped the shock-bars with one arm and the other leg, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The engine coughed, but thirty-five was all it would do. Through the windshield Tom could see the endless rolling dunes of the Martian desert stretching to the horizon on every side. They called Mars the Red Planet, but it was not red when you were close to it.
He noticed that the plane was slanting gradually downward. His eyes went to the dial that showed descent at somewhere between two and three hundred feet a minute. That was for his benefit. The cabin was pressurized, though it did not attempt to simulate sea-level pressure. It was a good deal better than the outside air, however, and yet too quick a descent meant discomfort.
The boats were next. They were typical landing craft, shaped like rectangular boxes. There was no need for streamlining in the vacuum of space. They were not pressurized. Only men in space suits rode in the ungainly boxes. He checked all blast tubes to make sure they were clear. There were small single tubes on each side of the craft. A clogged one could explode and blow the boat up.
The observatory was accessible only from a spaceship or air flyer, and, at that altitude, had to be pressurized and sealed against the thin, cold air outside. Within, the temperature was kept constant to a fraction of a degree to keep thermal expansion from throwing the mirror out of true.
There were ten passengers in the little pressurized cabin of the electric bus that shuttled between the rocket field and Marsport. Ten men, the driver and Bruce Gordon.
But it hurt to have had even a crazy hope taken away. Sally said, trying hard to interest him, "These rockets hold an awful lot of fuel, Joe! And it's better than scientists thought a chemical fuel could ever be!" "Yes," said Joe. "Fluorine-beryllium," said Sally urgently. "It fits in with the pushpots' having pressurized cockpits. Rockets like that couldn't be used on the ground!
"Ah, and what sort of a thing is this small spaceship, now?" "A thing like a pair of fifty-ton lorries, with airlocks between, and connected at the middle; airtight, of course, and pressurized and insulated, like a spaceship. One side's living' quarters for a six-man crew sometimes the gang's out for as long as a week at a time and the other side's a workshop." That sounded interesting.
He'd have liked to be back in the cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot's cabin was pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west by south.
Word Of The Day