"We manufacture only oxygen; we can't supply nitrogen--By the bye, Ardan, won't you watch the apparatus carefully every now and then to see that the oxygen is not generated too freely.

Very serious consequences would attend an immoderate supply of oxygen--No, we can't manufacture nitrogen, which is so absolutely necessary for our air and which might escape readily through the open windows." "What! the few seconds we should require for flinging out poor Satellite ?" "A very few seconds indeed they should be," said Barbican, very gravely.
"Your second reason ?" asked Ardan.
"The second reason is, that we must not allow the external cold, which must be exceedingly great, to penetrate into our Projectile and freeze us alive." "But the Sun, you know--" "Yes, the Sun heats our Projectile, but it does not heat the vacuum through which we are now floating.

Where there is no air there can neither be heat nor light; just as wherever the rays of the Sun do not arrive directly, it must be both cold and dark.

The temperature around us, if there be anything that can be called temperature, is produced solely by stellar radiation.

I need not say how low that is in the scale, or that it would be the temperature to which our Earth should fall, if the Sun were suddenly extinguished." "Little fear of that for a few more million years," said M'Nicholl.
"Who can tell ?" asked Ardan.