A Space Oddessey 2061 Book 3 Chapter 10: Ship of Fools PART I : THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

A Space Oddessey 2061 Book 3 Chapter 10: Ship of Fools PART I : THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

For the first forty-eight hours of the voyage, Heywood Floyd could not really believe the comfort, the spaciousness - the sheer extravagance of Universe's living arrangements. Yet most of his fellow passengers took them for granted; those who had never left Earth before assumed that all spaceships must be like this. He had to look back at the history of aeronautics to put matters in the right perspective. In his own lifetime, he had witnessed - indeed, experienced - the revolution that had occurred in the skies of the planet now dwindling behind him. Between the clumsy old Leonov and the sophisticated Universe lay exactly fifty years. (Emotionally, he couldn't really believe that - but it was useless arguing about arithmetic.) And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the first jet airliners. At the beginning of that half-century, intrepid aviators had hopped from field to field, begoggled and windswept on open chairs; at its end, grandmothers had slumbered peacefully b…