Word: glide
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that direction. The first is the rocket plane X-15 (TIME, March 3), which Putt thinks can be beefed up enough to carry an orbiting human and return him to earth alive. The second is DYNA-SOAR (from "dynamic soaring"), a vehicle that will use what Putt calls "boost-glide flight." It will be boosted up like a rocket, but will have wings and controls. The pilot can permit it to orbit freely around the earth for a while, or he can bring it down into the atmosphere at will...
...orbiting speed (18,000 m.p.h.). It will climb into genuine space, well above 150 miles. There will be no human pilot on the first flights. Automatic instruments will ride the winged satellite around the earth for awhile. Then, perhaps on electronic command from below, they will glide it to earth. Later, as the art develops, the first human pilot may take the same ride...
...Heat. Both skip and glide have their partisans. Dr. A. J. Eggers Jr. of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is a glide man. He figures that both skip and glide missiles are more efficient load-carriers for long ranges than ballistic missiles are. but he thinks that skip missiles will get too much heating and jolting during their violent acrobatics. Glide missiles will have to contend with heat only, and he thinks they can take it. When they speed through the high atmosphere toward a target 5,000 miles away, the temperature of their skin may reach about...
...glide missile, Eggers says, should be shaped rather like a child's paper dart (see cut). The slim conical body should have a blunt point, which does not get as hot at hypervelocity as a sharp point does. The leading edges of the wings and fins should be blunt too. This shape should radiate away enough frictional heat to keep the temperature of its skin below the softening point...
Both Eggers and Ferri point out that their glide or skip missiles are also promising as vehicles for bringing a human crew back alive from a satellite orbit or a trip to the moon. But it is safe to guess that the enormous amount of money and effort already expended on hypervelocity flight would not be made available without a military motive. There is some slim chance of countering a crude ballistic missile that can follow only a predictable course to a single target. But a hypervelocity missile that moves about as fast and can change its course...