Word: bucketful
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...push into space, was the familiar, well-tested Redstone, fitted for the occasion with slightly longer fuel tanks, and burning a hydrazine-based, exotic fuel called Hydyne, which gave more thrust than its motor's usual diet of alcohol. Stuck on its nose was an awkward-looking, cylindrical "bucket" mounted on a bearing so that it could be spun, and containing a cluster of 14 small, solid-fuel rockets, 40 in. long and 6 in. in diameter. Atop the bucket was a single, 80-in., solid-fuel rocket with the satellite proper forming its forward part...
...firing time approached, the bucket, driven by a small electric motor, began to rotate. This motion had the same purpose as the spin of a rifle bullet: to "spin-stabilize" the upper stages of the rocket. It would also check any tendency to veer off course if any of the small rockets in the bucket should ignite later than the others, or burn erratically...
...stage rocket motor lifted it off the ground at a fairly fast clip. The first stage burned for 150 seconds. When its fuel was gone, about 60 miles above the earth, most of the Redstone dropped away, leaving only a short section of the nose attached to the spinning bucket. As it zoomed upward at several thousand miles per hour, a gyroscopically controlled device turned the missile's attitude toward the horizontal by blowing jets of compressed air through nozzles. This process took about 240 seconds. By that time the bird was at the peak of its first-stage...
Obeying his electronic command, eleven of the small rockets in the bucket fired, blasting away the nose of the Redstone. They burned for six seconds. Two seconds after that, three more rockets fired, pushing free the empty shells of the first eleven. The central rocket carrying the satellite fired last. It spurted ahead and alone, and reached orbital velocity of more than 18,000 m.p.h...
Tomorrow the Moon. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Army's satellite is that its success was not due to new or startling equipment. The Redstone, which has long been in production, is essentially an improved German V2. The Jupiter-C version, with its spinning bucket of small rockets, is not new, either. Neither are its internal guidance instruments, its attitude-control device or its tracking systems. Nearly everything except the satellite itself and perhaps the rocket attached to it was "off the shelf...