Word: atlases
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...biggest rocket the U.S. had ever launched, a three-stage Atlas-Able, was off on the U.S.'s most ambitious space shot so far. The mission: to send an intricate, 372-lb. payload of instruments into the vicinity of the moon-and if all went well, into orbit around the moon. The rocket also carried a weighty cargo of hope and national pride: Nikita Khrushchev had kicked off his trip to the U.S. with the Russian moon shot; a U.S. answer exploded on the pad while he was in the U.S. Here, on the eve of the President...
Into the Sea. Some 40 seconds after the Atlas-Able blasted off, a flame-colored chunk fell off the rocket and hurtled into the sea. "I've never seen this before," growled a watching Air Force officer. "We're in trouble. We're in trouble. I'm sure we are." The rocket kept soaring until it disappeared from sight out over the Atlantic. But an hour later Program Director Adolph K. Thiel, somber and red-eyed, told waiting newsmen the unhappy news: "We didn't make it. Something happened. We don't know what...
Until the '60s. If the U.S. had an adequate space program, the next step would be to remedy the trouble with the nose fairing and try again. But the shocking fact is that the U.S. has no more Atlas-Able rockets available for trying again. All the Atlases allotted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have already been assigned to other urgent space programs, and NASA has no spare funds to order additional Atlases. The bigger space vehicles that NASA has under development will not be ready for launching for more than a year: Vega (Atlas plus upper...
...last week's misfire, an anonymous "high administration official" charged that NASA was "stupid" and "naive" in the planning of its moonshot program. He was right. But much of the stupidity and naivete lay with the high official's cohorts, who have yet to speed up the Atlas production line-still proceeding at a leisurely 50% of capacity at the Convair plants in San Diego...
Minuteman. Most promising solid-fuel rocket is the Minuteman, the Air Force's long-range (6,300 miles) missile. Not much has been revealed officially, but an air of success hangs around men who are working on it. Much smaller than its rivals, the liquid-fuel Atlas and Titan, it has three stages filled with fuel made mostly of a rubbery plastic holding together crystals of an oxygen-supplying material, such as ammonium perchlorate. The ingredients are first blended to form a semiliquid mass like peanut butter. This is pumped with extreme care into the rocket casing and cured...