Word: ballooned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...balloon-launched Air Force rocket, fired over Eniwetok as part of a research program called Project Far Side, burst into outer space, beyond the 580 miles of the Soviet satellite, beyond the 625-mile record set by the Army Jupiter, with preliminary instrument studies indicating the rocket may have soared 4,000 miles (distance from earth to moon: 238,857 miles...
Automatic Observatory. The astronomer in charge of the balloon-borne observatory, Dr. Martin Schwarzschild of Princeton University, did not go aloft with his telescope. To keep him alive and functioning at extreme altitude would have been too difficult. And besides, as he explained, even the most careful motions of a human operator would destroy the serene stability of the balloon...
...soon as the balloon took off, it was out of human hands. When it reached 80,000 ft., automatic controls would ready the telescope and point it at the sun. They would take about 8,000 pictures (f/200, 1/1000 sec. exposure). Then, their duty done, they would separate the observatory from the balloon and drop it to earth on a giant parachute...
...balloon climbed above 95% of the atmosphere, and left nearly all of its turbulence far below. Even though the automatic observatory was not so elaborate as a ground observatory, it took much better pictures. When they have been carefully studied, they will give scientists new information about the seething turbulence of the sun's surface, which affects the earth in many important ways...
...first flight of Project Stratoscope, thinks Dr. Schwarzschild, was so successful that the same method may be used to take pictures of the planets. A larger balloon-borne telescope floating far above atmospheric turbulence might decide once and for all the romantic debate about life on Mars...