Word: cones
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Pioneer III was a 12.95-lb. Fiberglass cone. Its surface was washed thinly with gold to make it electrically conductive, and it was ingeniously utilized as an antenna for Pioneer's radio. Over the gold were stripes of black and white paint, designed to control heat from the sun's rays and thus to keep Pioneer III warmer than Pioneer I, whose interior became so cold that some instruments did not work...
...attain a top speed of 24,486 m.p.h. This would have been enough to toss it free of the earth's gravitation and make it a satellite (or burned-up victim) of the sun. The actual speed attained, 23,606 m.p.h., was only enough to carry the gold cone 66,654 miles from the earth. It reached its high point in 20 hours of travel. Then it fell back. Gathering speed again in its long fall, it hit the earth about 20 hours later in a brief streak of flame in the night sky over Africa...
...reduce its speed at the chosen moment and spot. A parachute will slow it further, and a radio will shout an S O S. Finding the satellite with its undeveloped films or its beat-up "primate" should not be much harder than finding a missile's nose cone...
...Allen did not say so, but his diagram points out clearly that a cone-shaped area over the magnetic poles is almost radiation-free. Obvious conclusion: the space ports of the future may have to be in far northern Canada or Antarctica, where men can soar into space through the escape zones over the magnetic poles, thus eluding the lethal hazards of the Van Allen belt...
...foot-long, 13-pound nose cone was tracked to a height of 66,654 miles before the force of the earth's gravity whisked it back from its probe of outer space...