Word: drags
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...energy by burning their fuel very fast-in a few seconds, if desirable. Instead of struggling painfully off the ground as liquid-fuel rockets do, the solid-fuel bird can be gone in a flash. Its higher speed while still in the dense lower atmosphere costs something in aerodynamic drag, but since solid-fuel rockets have no pumps, valves or plumbing, they are more compact and can slip through the air more easily...
Computing machines have grown so efficient that the worst drag on their performance is the fallible human brain. Last week Engineering Consultant Stuart Luman Seaton told a Manhattan convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers that computing machines probably make less than one mistake in transferring 10²° (100 billion billion) digits. Humans make one mistake in transferring only 200 digits. So the machine's accurate figuring often goes for nothing because it must depend for care and feeding on error-prone humans...
...angle of about 34° and coming only as far north as Atlanta. At its highest point (apogee), the orbit rises to 1,700 miles above the earth, descending to about 200 miles (perigee). The round trip takes 114 minutes. This is a "safe" orbit, above nearly all the drag of the atmosphere, and higher than the orbits of the Russian satellites...
This was too good to last, Namias knew. He kept his eyes on the Pacific, and about the end of December he saw what he was looking for: a great wave in the planetary wind. It was moving toward the U.S., and when it arrived it would surely drag down from the north a vast amount of the bitter cold that had been accumulating there. So on Dec. 30 Namias predicted that during January the U.S. east of the Rockies would get extra-cold weather...
...area at tremendous speeds, probably will have to make only minor adjustments in their plans. But if the Smithsonian's finding checks out, the perigee (minimum orbital altitude) for a long-lived satellite will have to be raised from 140 miles to 180 miles because of the decelerating drag of air particles at the lower altitude. Anticipated perigee for Vanguard: a safe 200 miles. Scientists at Washington's Carnegie Institution are still puzzling over a radio phenomenon of Sputnik I: a "ghost" signal that registered on their receivers when the artificial satellite was on the opposite side...