Word: atlases
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...commendable and well-kept secrecy, the U.S. fired-and guided-an 85-ft., 8,600-lb. Atlas intercontinental missile into orbit. Admittedly, the shot of the heavy bird, with its voice-receiving and transmitting equipment, was a calculated counter-symbol to the Russian Sputniks (see Space). But in the sweep of time it symbolized far more: the U.S. march into space, programed long before Sputnik stirred up the free world's self-doubters, was headed into a period of historic achievements that had important meanings both in space and on earth...
...Atlas spun through space, symbolizing U.S. successes, it also symbolized what the U.S. hoped to make of them. "This is the President of the U.S. speaking," said a message taped at the White House and rebroadcast from Atlas. "Through the marvels of scientific advance my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in outer space. My message is a simple one. Through this unique means I convey to you and to all mankind America's wish for peace on earth and good will toward men everywhere...
...news quickly flashed across the world: the Air Force's 85-ft. 8,600-lb. ICBM Atlas had been fired, not in a trajectory whose end was a watery South Atlantic target but into the skies. Its tape recording of President Eisenhower's greetings heralded the beginning of worldwide communications through outer space. Earlier U.S. satellites were fired in stages, dropped sections after burnout, and finally flung small instrumented payloads into orbit around the earth. But somehow there was greater impact in the fact that the body of the Atlas went up in one piece, was circling...
...Johnson, chief of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency. Subject of the discussion: Sputnik III. Said Johnson: "We've got to get something big up." Replied J. Raymon Dempsey, manager of Convair's Astronautics Division (since named a vice president): "Well, we could put the whole Atlas in orbit...
...knew of it. One day early last week, a few Army Signal Corps technicians showed up discreetly in the President's office, recorded the satellite message that Ike himself had written, tucked it away till it was needed at Cape Canaveral. Even the button pusher who fired the Atlas from the Cape blockhouse did not know that the bird contained the tape recording, or that it had been set to orbit. Most of the others in the launching crew were equally in the dark and equally furious during the first moments of flight, when they noted from instruments that...