Word: blastoff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Voyage caused a momentary sensation among premature space bugs, then disappeared from the repertory and has rarely been seen since. The story, as revived by the newly formed Boston Opera Group, concerns one Prince Caprice of the Kingdom of Flambeau, who persuades the nation's top scientist, Dr. Blastoff, to design him a moon rocket with plushy upholstery, an anchor at its stern, gaily-blinking lights and signal flags. This vehicle was trundled off the Boston Public Garden's stage last week and sent moonward with a bang, a yellow flash and an ominous puff of smoke. From...
...possibly grave long-term effects (over days, weeks or months) of weightlessness on the human circulatory and respiratory systems. But these suggestions emerged: a weightless man in space need not be witless if he has had time to recover from the probable dulling effect of massive g forces during blastoff; his reasoning powers should be unimpaired; he need be in little danger of injuring himself from muscular overshooting-neither of us overshot objects that we reached for, though we did our reaching gingerly...
...nose cone of a three-stage rocket, a man lies on his back with his knees drawn up, waiting for the explosion that -will thrust him into space. Blastoff. The roar swallows him; intense vibration courses through his shackled, layer-enveloped body. He is hurtling into the inky empyrean where the sun's rays give no light, where there is no such thing as height, where there is no up and no down -where, if he drops his guard for an instant, the irresistible forces of the cosmos will destroy...
...heavy a warhead per pound of fuel. Critics of solid fuel argue that it requires a canister that can withstand great pressures, that solid fuel blasts off with a jolt that is rough on the missile's complex guidance systems; the Navy insists that it can control the blastoff, but it has not yet tested its technique on the missile. Another key problem: how to shut off the solid-charge propulsion at the precise point needed to drop the missile on target (in lox missiles this is accomplished by turning off a valve). The Navy says it has solved...
This will be the real and immediate meaning of the fateful X-day that will occur at the Air Force Missile Test Center in Florida a few weeks hence when Ben Schriever's first Model-T ICBM is lifted vertically for its first test blastoff. And while this will be a great moment in military history, what will 1987 think of it? Or 1997? The missile stands just about where the airplane stood after World War I-when military planes had to compete for the taxpayer dollar with the cavalry horse. How primitive will tomorrow...