Communications satellites, PCs, virtual reality, even the Internet. I learned about Orion spaceships by reading Niven & Pournelle's
Footfall (
Michael taking off after the alien spaceship is still one of my favorite sequences in SF... Corin, if
Footfall isn't on your reading list yet it should be!) I learned that the vacuum of space can be
survived for short periods of time by reading SF. Even the inventions and ideas that SF authors don't originate, they bring into the mainstream by featuring in their stories
what would happen if someone tried that Schroedinger experiment?
Heinlein featured Schoedinger's cat in The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.
Yeah... just re-read Clarke's short story where he first wrote of the fact that you can survive in space - he estimated up to two minutes, with proper precautions - this evening, it was in the anthology I was reading. Wouldn't be pleasant, but... well, being spaced is not as quick a way to die as the movies show. Anyone see - what was it - Mission to Mars, I think? The astronauts are hanging around in space and for whatever reason, the one takes off his helmet and is instantly "freeze-dried". Not realistic at all, I sat there yelling at the tv for ten minutes. The movie got worse from there...