Trivia / Noon: 22nd Century

• Science Marches On:
  • In Night on Mars cosmonauts can move around the planet with polar clothing and an oxygen mask, without a full pressure suit. Before the first automated probes the Martian surface pressure was widely assumed to be in the range of 80-100 millibars, above the Armstrong limit. It's actually 6 millibars.
  • The moons of Mars are portrayed as artificial satellites. While controversial, this was a serious scientific hypothesis proposed by Soviet astronomer Iosif S. Shklovsky around the time the short story was written. Shklovsky deduced, from measurements of Phobos's orbit carried out by other astronomers over many decades, that the satellite had to be impossibly light, and therefore should be hollow, and artificial. Those measurements later proved incorrect, and both Phobos and Deimos are now confirmed to be natural.