A guy that I knew fell from the roof of his cottage: multiple fractures, both legs; never fully recovered. If he had fallen head first, then he would not have recovered, period.
Jan Svoboda reflects that a man who fell off a roof on Earth might just have broken a leg. However, Rustum has 1.25 gravity. A man whom Svoboda sees fall off a roof has a smashed pelvis and his ribs driven into his lungs.
Colonists face hardship. Every terrestroid planet is different and its environment is not the one that human beings have evolved in and for. Poul Anderson always makes it clear that extra-solar planetary surfaces are not just stage-sets where human beings can land and carry on business as usual which is the impression that we get of all the colonized planets in Asimov's Galactic Empire.
I did not set out to take a side-swipe at Asimov but I did it anyway.
My friend from the Birmingham Buddhist Centre should arrive for a visit soon and I have some videos to watch about current events. (Anderson's characters have their crises and we have ours.)
2 comments:
Heavier gravity would select for more robust bones, shorter size and thicker muscles.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I remember that incident Jan Svoboda recalled, from recently rereading ORBIT UNLIMITED. The thought I had was that one way of preventing many such fatal accidents would be for people working on roofs to wear a protective harness that would catch them if they fell. A nuisance, maybe, but better than getting killed or crippled.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, and we see that with some of the Rustum colonists, such as Daniel Coffin. And on Imhotep, in THE GAME OF EMPIRE. That planet has a gravity 30% greater than that of Terra's, and seems to be the maximum human colonists would/could tolerate. Human Imhotepans whose families had dwelt there for generations were described as being stocky. With perhaps the average height for males being 5 feet and 5/6 inches?
Ad astra! Sean
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