Word: balsa
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Crucial Maneuver. It was indeed. In 1966, the Russians had made the initial soft landing on the moon, but their equipment at the time was relatively primitive-a simple sphere covered with balsa wood that was ejected just before its carrier rocket smashed into the lunar surface. After bouncing and rolling to a stop, the sphere unfolded its panels like petals of a flower, righted itself and exposed its TV camera and transmitter. Luna 16 was a far more sophisticated instrument. Although the Soviets revealed few details, Western space experts believe that the spacecraft that descended to the lunar surface...
...from Barbados) that the ancient Egyptians, who sailed such papyrus craft, could have discovered America 40 centuries ago, Heyerdahl proudly noted that his vessel had survived its journey intact. Ra II will eventually be installed in an Oslo museum alongside an earlier ocean-going ship of Heyerdahl design: the balsa raft Kon-Tiki, which made the journey from Peru to Polynesia...
First he sailed 4,300 miles across the Pacific from Peru to French Polynesia aboard Kon-Tiki, a primitive raft made of balsa logs. Now Author-Explorer Thor Heyerdahl, 54, plans to navigate the Atlantic in a 45-ft. by 15-ft. craft made of papyrus, to prove his theory that people from ancient Mediterranean civilizations could have made the journey. Heyerdahl and a crew of six will shove off from Safi, Morocco, next month, charting a course through the Canary Islands to Central America, where traces of what seems to be primitive Old World cultures have been found. Until...
...pitted his skill against the sea in small, hand-built boats; after his battered 11½-ft. sloop Little One was found empty 400 miles west of Ireland and 143 days out of Montauk Point, L.I. A seaman since 15, Willis sailed alone in 1954 aboard a balsa raft from Peru to Samoa, and in 1963-64 made a 10,000-mile solo voyage from Peru to Australia. Before his third and last unsuccessful attempt to reach England from America alone, he said: "The greatest challenge is to prevent the solitude from driving you so mad that you want...
...gusty wind snapped in at 20 knots across Ohio's Clinton County Air Force Base, but all systems were Go. "T minus seven and counting," boomed the range officer's bullhorn. ". . . Five, four, three, two, one-ignition!" And with that, a 12-in. plastic, balsa and paper rocket zoomed aloft bearing a one-ounce payload of lead to the somewhat suborbital altitude of 800 ft. "Good shot," cheered the range officer. "A good bird...