h2g2 Literary Corner: Space Flight as Reality TV
Created | Updated Jan 22, 2017
Sturgeon's Law says that 90 percent of everything is crap, so we don't expect too much of old science fiction. Still, this tale is pretty darn good. Must be part of the 10 percent.
Space Flight as Reality TV
The title says it all. That's basically the plot of Murray Leinster's satirical 1954 story Operation: Outer Space. They finance interstellar flight by turning it into a TV show. The book's available from Project Gutenberg at that link, and it's worth a read. One of the fascinating things about science fiction written before NASA was even founded is taking a look at what they got right and what they got wrong. After all, in 1954, nobody had ever experienced weightlessness. So don't be so smug. Just see what errors you can spot, and enjoy the snark. For this is a truly snarky story, and remarkably perspicacious.
Operation: Outer Space
The stewardess' voice came matter-of-factly from below him in the upended cylinder which was the passenger-space.
"We take off in forty-five seconds. You will find yourself feeling very heavy. There is no cause to be alarmed. If you observe that breathing is oppressive, the oxygen content of the air in this ship is well above earth-level, and you will not need to breathe so deeply. Simply relax in your chair. Everything has been thought of. Everything has been tested repeatedly. You need not disturb yourself at all. Simply relax."
Silence. Two heart-beats. Three.
There was a roar. It was a deep, booming, numbing roar that came from somewhere outside the rocket's hull. Simultaneously, something thrust Cochrane deep into the foam-cushions of his contour-chair. He felt the cushion piling up on all sides of his body so that it literally surrounded him. It resisted the tendency of his arms and legs and abdomen to flatten out and flow sidewise, to spread him in a thin layer over the chair in which he rested.
He felt his cheeks dragged back. He was unduly conscious of the weight of objects in his pockets. His stomach pressed hard against his backbone. His sensations were those of someone being struck a hard, prolonged blow all over his body.
It was so startling a sensation, though he'd read about it, that he simply stayed still and blankly submitted to it. Presently he felt himself gasp. Presently, again, he noticed that one of his feet was going to sleep. He tried to move it and succeeded only in stirring it feebly. The roaring went on and on and on....
The red letters in the panel said: "First stage ends in five seconds."
By the time he'd read it, the rocket hiccoughed and stopped. Then he felt a surge of panic. He was falling! He had no weight! It was the sensation of a suddenly dropping elevator a hundred times multiplied. He bounced out of the depression in the foam-cushion. He was prevented from floating away only by the straps that held him.
There was a sputter and a series of jerks. Then he had weight again as roarings began once more. This was not the ghastly continued impact of the take-off, but still it was weight – considerably greater weight than the normal weight of Earth. Cochrane wiggled the foot that had gone to sleep. Pins and needles lessened their annoyance as sensation returned to it. He was able to move his arms and hands. They felt abnormally heavy, and he experienced an extreme and intolerable weariness. He wanted to go to sleep.
This was the second-stage rocket-phase. The moon-rocket had blasted off at six gravities acceleration until clear of atmosphere and a little more. Acceleration-chairs of remarkably effective design, plus the pre-saturation of one's blood with oxygen, made so high an acceleration safe and not unendurable for the necessary length of time it lasted. Now, at three gravities, one did not feel on the receiving end of a violent thrust, but one did feel utterly worn out and spent. Most people stayed awake through the six-gravity stage and went heavily to sleep under three gravities.
Cochrane fought the sensation of fatigue. He had not liked himself for accepting the orders that had brought him here. They had been issued in bland confidence that he had no personal affairs which could not be abandoned to obey cryptic orders from the secretary of a boss he had actually never seen. He felt a sort of self-contempt which it would have been restful to forget in three-gravity sleep. But he grimaced and held himself awake to contemplate the unpretty spectacle of himself and his actions.
The red light said: "Second stage ends ten seconds."
And in ten seconds the rockets hiccoughed once more and were silent, and there was that sickening feeling of free fall, but he grimly made himself think of it as soaring upward instead of dropping—which was the fact, too—and waited until the third-stage rockets boomed suddenly and went on and on and on.
This was nearly normal acceleration; the effect of this acceleration was the feel of nearly normal weight. He felt about as one would feel in Earth in a contour-chair tilted back so that one faced the ceiling. He knew approximately where the ship would be by this time, and it ought to have been a thrill. Cochrane was hundreds of miles above Earth and headed eastward out and up. If a port were open at this height, his glance should span continents.
No.... The ship had taken off at night. It would still be in Earth's shadow. There would be nothing at all to be seen below, unless one or two small patches of misty light which would be Earth's too-many great cities. But overhead there would be stars by myriads and myriads, of every possible color and degree of brightness. They would crowd each other for room in which to shine. The rocket-ship was spiralling out and out and up and up, to keep its rendezvous with the space platform.
The platform, of course, was that artificial satellite of Earth which was four thousand miles out and went around the planet in a little over four hours, traveling from west to east. It had been made because to break the bonds of Earth's gravity was terribly costly in fuel – when a ship had to accelerate slowly to avoid harm to human cargo. The space platform was a filling station in emptiness, at which the moon-rocket would refuel for its next and longer and much less difficult journey of two hundred thirty-odd thousand miles.
The stewardess came up the ramp, moving briskly. She stopped and glanced at each passenger in each chair in turn. When Cochrane turned his open eyes upon her, she said soothingly:
"There's no need to be disturbed. Everything is going perfectly."
"I'm not disturbed," said Cochrane. "I'm not even nervous. I'm perfectly all right."
"But you should be drowsy!" she observed, concerned. "Most people are. If you nap you'll feel better for it."
She felt his pulse in a businesslike manner. It was normal.
"Take my nap for me," said Cochrane, "or put it back in stock. I don't want it. I'm perfectly all right."
She considered him carefully. She was remarkably pretty. But her manner was strictly detached. She said:
"There's a button. You can reach it if you need anything. You may call me by pushing it."
He shrugged. He lay still as she went on to inspect the other passengers. There was nothing to do and nothing to see. Travellers were treated pretty much like parcels, these days. Travel, like television entertainment and most of the other facilities of human life, was designed for the seventy-to-ninety-per-cent of the human race whose likes and dislikes and predilections could be learned exactly by surveys. Anybody who didn't like what everybody liked, or didn't react like everybody reacted, was subject to annoyances. Cochrane resigned himself to them.
The red light-letters changed again, considerably later. This time they said: "Free flight, thirty seconds."
They did not say "free fall," which was the technical term for a rocket coasting upward or downward in space. But Cochrane braced himself, and his stomach-muscles were tense when the rockets stopped again and stayed off. The sensation of continuous fall began. An electronic speaker beside his chair began to speak. There were other such mechanisms beside each other passenger-chair, and the interior of the rocket filled with a soft murmur which was sardonically like choral recitation.
"The sensation of weightlessness you now experience," said the voice soothingly, "is natural at this stage of your flight. The ship has attained its maximum intended speed and is still rising to meet the space platform. You may consider that we have left atmosphere and its limitations behind. Now we have spread sails of inertia and glide on a wind of pure momentum toward our destination. The feeling of weightlessness is perfectly normal. You will be greatly interested in the space platform. We will reach it in something over two hours of free flight. It is an artificial satellite, with an air-lock our ship will enter for refueling. You will be able to leave the ship and move about inside the Platform, to lunch if you choose, to buy souvenirs and mail them back and to view Earth from a height of four thousand miles through quartz-glass windows. Then, as now, you will feel no sensation of weight. You will be taken on a tour of the space platform if you wish. There are rest-rooms –."
Cochrane grimly endured the rest of the taped lecture. He thought sourly to himself: "I'm a captive audience without even an interest in the production tricks."
