Word: earth
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rocket engine will have fuel for only six minutes of powered flight, but after its fuel is gone, the X-15 is expected to climb on momentum at least 100 miles above the earth, probably a good deal higher. This altitude is not strictly space; there is still a little air, but it is much too thin for an airplane to steer by. So for controls the X-15 will use six small jets of hydrogen peroxide gases shooting out of its tail and wings. When the X-15 is above the effective atmosphere, its pilot will feel zero gravity...
...approach to manned space flight is to put a man in a rocket and depend on a parachute or other drag-making device to ease him back to earth. Another approach is to fit a piloted airplane with rocket motors powerful enough to toss it out of the atmosphere. It will have wings of a sort for gliding, and the pilot will land it like a conventional but extra-hot airplane...
Tricky Return. Return to earth will be the most ticklish part of the flight. The pilot will have the help of special flight instruments, and his object will be to meet the atmosphere at a very low angle to minimize speed and heating. The temperature of some parts of the structure is expected to reach 1,000° F. If the temperature rises too high, the pilot may point the nose upward to get into thinner air and let the ship cool off. Gradually the X-15 will lose both speed and altitude. When it has lost enough of both...
Another theory is that supernovae did the dinosaurs in. During the last thousand years, say Astronomers V.I. Krasovsky and I.S. Shklovsky of the Soviet Union, at least five supernovae (exploding stars) have been visible from the earth. Starting with this information, they calculate that every 200 million years or so a supernova explodes not more than 26 light-years (156 trillion miles) away from the earth...
...explosion is quite an event; for a couple of weeks the supernova gives as much light as 200 million suns. The Russian astronomers do not think that a brief burst of light from a supernova 26 light-years away would have much effect on the earth. Much more serious, they think, would be the vast amount of cosmic rays streaming out of the wreckage of the shattered star. For a few hundred or thousand years after the explosion, the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth would be many times greater than it is today...