space station n.
a large artificial satellite used as a long-term base for operations in space
Science
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[1929 Science Wonder Stories Aug. 272/2
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Spread out like the map of a war game, there would lie before the eyes of the observer in the spatial station the entire battlefield and its approaches.]
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1930
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Hugo Gernsback
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It might be asked: what useful purpose would be served by converting a space-flyer into a permanent, rapidly-revolving satellite of the earth in this manner? Professor Hermann Oberth, perhaps the greatest authority on interplanetary space, points out many uses for such revolving ‘space stations’, as he calls them. A better word, perhaps, would be ‘revolving space observatories’.
Stations in Space in Air Wonder Stories Apr. 869/1
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1941
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Jack Williamson
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Experimental Rocket Venus III calling Space Station A…. Generator burned out. Main communicator dead. Please rush relief.
Backlash in Astounding Science-Fiction Aug. 161 -
1953
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Oliver Saari
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You're about my age—you must remember when they shot the parts of the first moon rocket up to the Space Station. Alphonse Craig was putting them together. Greatest single-handed construction job ever done! He had to start from scratch, learning all the null-g and vacuum techniques without another pair of hands nor another brain to help him.
Space Man in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Apr. 84
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1956
Ray Bradbury
Think of it—a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station.
End of Beginning in R is for Rocket (1968)
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1973
Arthur C. Clarke
The largest of all space-stations, Syscat Five, was less than two hundred metres in diameter.
Rendezvous with Rama (1974) 38
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1977 Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Aug. 118/1
They put him in a space ship and launched him to a large artificial satellite that circled the world. This space station was called Command School.
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1983
Marion Zimmer Bradley
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Seriously, it’s not his fault, Magda, he wanted to command a space station.
Thendara House (1991) i. 275
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1990
Allen Steele
Essentially a Bernal sphere, surrounded at each end by torus clusters arrayed along axial shafts, solar vanes and giant mirrors, Clarke Country is the largest space station ever successfully built.
Clarke County, Space 26
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1993
Kim Stanley Robinson
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The largest subsidiary mission was to dock a part of the disassembled Ares on Phobos, and begin transforming that moon into a space station.
Red Mars ii. 74
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1997
Arthur C. Clarke
There was certainly a gravity field here—so he was probably inside the slowly turning wheel of an orbiting space-station.
3001: Final Odyssey . 17
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2006
S. M. Stirling
According to the news, they were busting their asses at that base in Guiana and their little space station, but it would be years before they could do anything interplanetary, and by then they'd be a distant third fiddle.
Sky People v. 121
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2019
Yoon Ha Lee
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Communications frequencies were much slower than travel via Gate and only reliable for reaching people in the immediate vicinity, which was why long-distance messages were conveyed by courier. The local space station should have heard us and relayed the distress signal, but it was an open question as to whether anyone in a position to help had detected it.
Dragon Pearl ix. 81
Research requirements
antedating 1930
Earliest cite
Hugo Gernsback, in Air Wonder Stories
Research History
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2019 cite from Yoon Ha Lee.
Last modified 2021-03-31 21:49:10
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
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