Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 72 — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION a large, transparent fishbowl helmet. Nice, until we remem- ber that in space, where there is no ozone layer to offer protection from ultra-violet, such a helmet would quickly result in something far more drastic than sunburn. transparent fishbowl helmets are out. And so are loosely- fitting flexible suits. Take an ordinary balloon, one of the long, sausage variety, inflate it hard, tie the end and try to bend it. Not so easy, is it? Now imagine a man enclosed in a loose, flexible suit inflated to a pressure of 15 lbs. a square inch, the normal sea-level pressure. The suit would be nicely rounded, the arms and legs extended rigidly from the body, something in the shape of a starfish. To bend an arm or leg would require impossible strength, as the internal pressure would be in the region of a ton to the square foot. Deep-sea divers, when they balloon up to the surface by reason of a stuck exhaust valve, have to be helped from their suits. Work- ing in such a position or such a suit would be impossible. # So,” 84 Starfishing, then, is the one thing which automatically eliminates all loosely-fitting flexible suits. Rigid, jointed suits, like old-fashioned suits of armour, are no better. Internal pressure is the same no matter what the material and, if we want to enclose our spaceman in a _ nice, normal layer of air, then we had better keep him inside the ship. He will be more useful that way. The usual reason given for the necessity of a pressurised suit is that a man _ will explode if exposed to the vacuum. A pressurised suit is necessary right enough, but not for the reason given. A man will not explode if thrust into the void without pro- tection. Such exposure means a sudden drop from 15 lbs. a square inch pressure to zero. Now, it doesn’t really matter if the pressure drop is from 30 lbs. to 15 lbs. or from 45 lbs. to 30 lbs. If the body can stand one, it can stand the other, and the human body can stand far higher pressure drops than that. Divers prove this each time they come to the surface, and comicloooks.com