a spaceship or space station
In 1929 quot.: a metal spacesuit.
You know it is a very different matter to insulate your tin can against absolute zero than to insulate one of my ice boxes against 90 degrees on a summer’s day. However,…it is not beyond our ability to obtain security against the low temperature of the moon’s surface.]
Two men for three years, in a tin can, makes one man. Nerve friction, as they call it.
You would make a fine picture going out there in your little tincan, waiting until the attackers came. They would float in with lights and most power out, everything shielded so that we couldn’t detect them.
When the Winship landed on Ganymede, it was on one of those errands that are handed over to destroyer-skippers, commanding the tin-cans of the space-fleet, because nobody with silver braid wants to do them.
Suddenly Commander Devlin grinned, and pulled a brandy bottle from his pocket, uncorking it as he spoke: ‘Well, Rocketeers, a short life and a merry one. I never did give a damn for riding in these tin cans.’
Our tin can landed first.
We're a couple miserable Texas cowboys. We built an interplanetary tin can. People made fun of us.
Commander Hatch looked down at his feet. ‘I was in a space can once,’ he said. ‘They don’t last forever. I—’ He let his voice trail away. Wilson looked into their faces. The cold, bleak fact was so clear in their faces that he could not ignore it. He was forced to recognize the fact that a lifeship is no spacecraft. A lifeship is a flimsy tin can, as spaceworthy as an open raft on the broad ocean, as spaceworthy as an umbrella in a windstorm.
‘Listen, Mr. Writer,’ Weiss spun on him, ‘we’ve been tooling this tin-can through space for five years, and we thank God nightly we’re still alive to report back.’
For here am I sitting in my tin can Far above the world Planet Earth is blue And there’s nothing I can do.
That happens every time the cylinder boys build a new tin can and need to form an ecosystem inside. Rock and ore they can get from Earth’s moon. For water they have to come to us, the Belters.
It wouldn’t be accurate enough for real survey work, but we only needed to know if there was sufficient oxygen and no poisonous gases. Fortunately, the display lit up blue. We were in the clear. We all looked at each other and exhaled in relief at the same time. ‘Okay,’ Sujin said, ‘let’s open this tin can.’
antedating 1938
J. W. Campbell, in Astounding Stories
Last modified 2021-03-31 21:50:32
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.