Word: balloons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Skyrocket passed altitude records: the top flight of jet planes (59,446 ft.); his own earlier records (secret). Finally he passed the highest of all: the record 72,395-ft. balloon flight of balloonists Captain Orvil A. Anderson* and the late Captain Albert W. Stevens in 1935. Just how high he got, the Navy would not say. Aviation gossip believes that the Skyrocket reached an altitude of more than 77,000 ft. (nearly 15 miles...
Space Travelers. Even if the space travelers survive their first hazards, they will have plenty of other things to worry about. Fog would envelop the cabin after the slightest perspiration on the part of the passengers. Their hair would stand on end, their clothes would balloon away from their bodies, and anything not nailed down would float aimlessly about the ship's interior. The space ship and its passengers would be bombarded by dangerous solar X rays and cosmic rays, would run the risk of colliding with meteorites plunging across the interplanetary course...
Bouncing Message. The wind carried the balloons at 30 m.p.h. high over a line of low, dark hills on the horizon, where lay the Czech border. At 30,000 feet, the rubber balloons exploded, releasing thousands of leaflets. Another type of balloon, pillow-shaped, of glistening, translucent polyethylene, slowly oozed hydrogen through the plastic pores and sank to earth; it would give a ghostly effect as it bounced along the ground over hedges or lodged against walls and trees. On it, in five-inch letters, was printed the single word svoboda (Czech for "freedom"). Inside were more leaflets...
Cautious Contact. What might the balloon barrage accomplish? Crusade for Freedom is not, so far, suggesting revolt, for revolt-like General Bor's in Warsaw -can be premature and disastrous. Instead, the balloons are an imaginative experiment in contact, bearing a message of hope until the time might be ripe for other words...
...down a 15-inch-gauge, 500-yard track scooted two not-too-reasonable facsimiles of the Emett trains (rechristened "Far Tottering and Oyster Creek"), past weird scenery erected along the line: flat-footed cows, crooked lampposts hung with lobster pots. One train had a candy-striped engine with a balloon-shaped boiler and an elegant, winged smokestack; the other had spidery wheels, a teapot boiler and potted pink geraniums on top. Midgets dressed up as policemen were hired the first week to direct the delighted crowds which flocked about Britain's own Toonerville Trolley...