Word: braun
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that the first brush of air resistance burns them up. The highest-flying rocket so far (the two-stage "Bumper WAC Corporal," which rose 250 miles) came back to earth with its steel fins partially fused. The recovery men shudder at the thought of what would happen to Von Braun's returning crews. Their red-hot spiral around the earth may be theoretically possible, but even a slight mischance would be fatal...
This makes rocket progress necessarily slow. Rosen believes that Von Braun's 7,000-ton shuttle rockets - to say nothing of his space station-would be a reckless leap into the blind future, like trying to build a B-36 out of the engines and wing sections used in World War I. The inevitable outcome, he thinks, would be a gigantic fiasco...
Rosen admits that chemical fuels, burned in a multi-stage rocket, can theoretically place a payload in a permanent orbit. But he points out that the Von Braun plan would expend more than 6,000 tons of fuel for each 36-ton payload. Even if the shuttle rockets survived more than one trip (Rosen thinks it unlikely), the carrying charge on each ton of payload would be fantastic...
Specialized Difficulties. At White Sands Proving Ground, where most U.S. rockets are put to the test, Von Braun's theories are received with a mixture of fascination and alarm. Most rocket engineers, even the hard-handed practical ones, are deeply moved by the idea of space flight. But when they look closely at Von Braun's proposal, each man sees the worst difficulties in the specialty he knows best. Propulsion experts, for example, know that they must baby even a single rocket motor. They hate to think of making 51 of them fire properly and at the same...
...thing the space doctors are sure of: human bodies and nervous systems resent fluctuations of gravity. Moderate increases are not too bad if they do not last long. The crews of Von Braun's shuttle rockets would have to withstand nine "Gs" (nine times normal gravity) for brief periods as they left the earth. They could survive by lying on their backs on contour couches, say the space doctors, but they would not enjoy...