Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Before Von Braun's "Project Orbiter" got off the ground, an International Geophysical Year panel, meeting in Rome in October 1954, called for earth-satellite launchings during IGY (July 1957 to December 1958). At the urging of the U.S.'s IGY committee, the Eisenhower Administration decided, in mid-1955, to undertake a satellite program as part of the nation's IGY effort. The basic top-level decision then to be made was how to run the project. The twofold decision that emerged from the National Security Council: 1) keep the satellite project separate from military ballistic-missile...
...least were ahead in the development of one. That presumption was far from an established fact. "Five hundred and sixty miles is only the distance from Bonn to Vienna," growled West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. "It does not prove they can fire anything parallel to the earth over a distance of many thousand miles." And even if Sputnik did imply Russian possession of an early version of an ICBM, the balance of atomic superiority still lay with the U.S. "The threat of devastation still hangs heavy over the Soviet head, derived from the ring of bomber bases...
...When we announced the successful testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile," Khrushchev crowed, "some American statesmen did not believe us. Now that we have successfully launched an earth satellite, only technically ignorant people can doubt this. The U.S. does not have an intercontinental ballistic missile; otherwise it would also have easily launched an earth satellite...
...made-in-Russia satellite continued to circle the earth last week, apparently as steady in its orbit as the made-by-nature moon. Most details about it still came from Russia. Repeating the previously announced dimensions, diameter: 58cm. (22.8 in.); weight: 83.6kg. (184.3 Ibs.), Pravda described it as a sphere of aluminum alloys with a "polished and specially treated surtace" and four metal rods as antennae 2.4 to 2.9 meters (7.9 to 9.5 ft.) long. When the carrier rocket was fired, the rods were folded back against the sphere, but swung outward on swivels when the satellite reached...
According to Pravda, the satellite's launching rocket took off directly upward, and curved away from the vertical soon after firing. It had several stages, but Pravda, giving few details, said merely that when the carrier reached several hundred kilometers altitude and was moving parallel to the earth's surface at 8,000 meters per sec. (about 18,000 m.p.h.), the satellite proper was detached from its protective nose-cone and the burned-out rocket. The three objects separated slowly, following slightly different orbits...