a person who does not regularly travel in space
[extended from the aviation sense ‘a person who has never been in an airplane’ (1926 in OED)]
The simple truth is…that you’re a groundhog and a damned poor son-in-law for a spaceman.
Stevens streaked in after him, displaying a groundhog’s harmless pride in handling himself well in space conditions.
It is hard for a groundhog to dismiss the notion of weight.
What are you…get your hand off me you…you groundhog.
Spacers pick up careful habits…if they live long enough. Where a groundhog would have left the record for later, Brea always checked and double checked everything.
Even after the human race had moved into the near-Earth orbits, scattering their spindly factories and cylinder-cities and rock-hopping entrepreneurs, the human race was dominated by nay-saying groundhogs.
Sharing birth years was an old sport among spacers, although not between them and the groundhogs.
‘Somebody scare up a definition of the Drake equation and let’s supply some answers.[’] Now if we’d been back on Earth, I’m sure everyone would’ve had that definition instantly. Groundhogs don’t appreciate the solitude of deep space. In deep space, you don’t have an instant link to the Internet. It can take hours or days to get home. I take considerable satisfaction from this fact.
antedating 1940
Nelson S. Bond in Planet Stories
Last modified 2021-10-15 19:37:02
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.