"bob h" <omn### [at] charternet> wrote in message
news:3c084b02@news.povray.org...

> Can't decide if I should add the shock absorbers on the top and bottom.
> Anyone know the book and whether it has them all over?  Would appreciate
> knowing that if so, I can probably find a online reference to the book
too.

Nice job, Bob.  I really liked the rivets that you put around the plates and
the orange color of the sphere.  They made it look more "real" to me.  I
liked the landing legs all around, but if I were inside, I would want it to
land on the bottom only.  Artistically, I liked your idea better than a
platonic solid, which is what I envisioned when I read the story.

I remember reading the story and they talked about shutters made of the
Cavorite that could be opened and closed to control the motion of the ship
by tacking between gravitational bodies.  I think the glass ball with
rollerblind shutters of gravity proof material would look pretty cool as
well.  I found the text for H. G. Wells "First Man in the Moon" on the
Project Gutenberg web site:

http://promo.net/pg/

From that source chapter 3:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"It's like this," he said. "Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things
off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it down.
And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all that
uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting
up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up too,
I don't Know what would have happened! But suppose the substance is loose,
and quite free to go up? "

"It will go up at once!"

"Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun."

"But what good will that do? "

"I'm going up with it! "

I put down my teacup and stared at him.

"Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large enough to hold two people and
their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass; it will
contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water
distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the
outer steel - "

"Cavorite? "

"Yes."

"But how will you get inside? "

"There was a similar problem about a dumpling."

"Yes, I know. But how?"

"That's perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. That,
of course, will have to be a little complicated; there will have to be a
valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss
of air."

"Like Jules Verne's thing in A Trip to the Moon."

But Cavor was not a reader of fiction.

"I begin to see," I said slowly. "And you could get in and screw yourself
up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become
impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly -"

"At a tangent."

"You would go off in a straight line - " I stopped abruptly. "What is to
prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?" I
asked. "You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do - how will you get
back? "

"I've just thought of that," said Cavor. "That's what I meant when I said
the thing is finished. The inner glass sphere can be air-tight, and,
except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be made in
sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a roller
blind. These can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked by
electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass.  All that
is merely a question of detail. So you see, that except for the thickness
of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of
windows or blinds, whichever you like to call them. Well, when all these
windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat, no gravitation, no radiant
energy of any sort will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on
through space in a straight line, as you say. But open a window, imagine
one of the windows open. Then at once any heavy body that chances to be in
that direction will attract us "

I sat taking it in.

"You see?" he said.

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