Word: airlessness
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...aerodynamic controls to be effective, the X-15 has an independent system of ballistic controls that need no air. In the nose are four pairs of small jets pointing up, down, left and right (see diagram). When the pilot wants to depress the nose of his craft in near-airless space, he will shoot superheated steam (produced by catalyzed hydrogen peroxide) through the upward-pointing jets. The reaction will push the nose downward. Similar jets in the wingtips will keep the wings level or make the ship bank or roll...
...almost impossible cargo for earth-moon transportation. But the moon's vacuum, says Dr. Castruccio, makes conventional power plants unnecessary. The essential parts of a photoelectric tube, which on earth must be enclosed in vacuum-tight glass, can be laid out on the moon's airless surface, where they will produce electricity whenever sunlight hits them...
...lunar power plant (which he calls an "electron farm") is nothing but a thin plastic sheet coated with cesium or some other material that gives off electrons when struck by light. On earth these electrons would get nowhere; they would be captured immediately by atmospheric atoms. On the airless moon the electrons could be collected by a wire mesh. Flowing out of the mesh, they would form a direct electric current...
...motion of small particles, the radioactive residue from the explosion would be carried all over the lunar surface. When earth's scientists finally land on the moon, they would not be able to distinguish between its natural radioactivity, perhaps including material formed by cosmic rays hitting the airless surface, and the nuclear litter scattered by earth's vandals...
Benny's mother arrived home to find a town-strong task force deployed across her lawn. Firemen had lowered a hose to Benny and were pumping oxygen into the airless hole. In the eerie shadows cast by searchlights, trucks disgorged tools, timber, volunteers. Rescue workers were feverishly digging a pit ten feet from Benny's shaft and parallel to it. A power shovel clanked in to speed the digging, but had to give up only four feet down when the pit caved in. A dozen men stepped back into the hole with hand shovels, shoring up the crumbling...