Word: earthness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...same reason, electron beam-welding?which also requires a high vacuum?would be facilitated on the moon. Another joining process, cold-welding, could become an important part of lunar industry. In a vacuum, two perfectly clean and smooth metal surfaces?uncontaminated by oxides that are formed in the earth's atmosphere ?can be welded solidly together without heat and with little pressure...
...lunar vacuum itself may some day become a salable commodity. Says Industrial Research magazine: "It is conceivable that a simple sealed pressure shell containing literally nothing inside, or an insulated package of a material cooled to ?441° F. or lower, with suitable 'vacuum locks,' could be shipped to earth ports intact?for a price less than evacuation or helium cooling on mother earth...
Valuable as the moon's vacuum may be, there are more palpable treasures. Some scientists, assuming that the moon was created when the earth was, some 4.5 billion years ago, calculate that about 10 trillion tons of meteors have fallen on the lunar surface. From their analysis of the composition of the relatively few meteors that reach the earth's surface (most are burned up by the atmosphere), they estimate that meteors have deposited 450 billion tons of iron, 30 billion tons of nickel, 10 billion tons of phosphorous, 9 billion tons of carbon, 6 billion tons of copper...
These vast resources are important not only for their potential use on earth, but also for their value in making a lunar colony self-sufficient. Although engineers hope eventually to reduce the cost of shipping payloads to the moon by using simple, unsophisticated boosters and flyable stages that can be returned to earth and used again, it now costs $22,187 per lb. with Saturn 5. The key to tapping lunar resources, Zwicky believes, is energy from the sun, which beats down directly on the moon's surface, unfiltered by atmosphere. Solar furnaces could be constructed, consisting of mirrors that...
Command Pilot Neil Armstrong, 38, could have missed his destiny as the result of half a dozen close shaves. He crashed his Panther jet behind enemy lines in Korea, but escaped a day later. As a civilian test pilot in 1962, he plummeted uncontrollably toward earth when the rocket engine in his X-15 failed to start, but it caught on just in time. As commander of Gemini 8 in 1966, he had to abort the scheduled three-day flight after ten hours when a short circuit threw the spacecraft's thrusters out of control. Last summer...