Word: gyros
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...give the 171-ton Haystack its phenomenal accuracy required miracles of designed precision. The huge aluminum antenna floats, for instance, on a film of oil not much thicker than a human hair, moves on a 30-ton bearing with the ease of a ship's gyro. The oil bearing eliminates what engineers call "stiction," for static friction, enables the antenna to rotate through more than three degrees of arc in less than one second, make a complete 180-degree about-face in less than one minute. With such agility, Haystack can track anything that can be tossed into space...
Developed by Minneapolis-Honeywell on theories worked out at the University of Illinois, the bottled star is officially named ESG (Electrically Suspended Gyro). Like all the gyroscopic equipment that guides modern missiles, ships, aircraft and spacecraft, ESG's performance depends on the fact that a rapidly spinning rotor tends to maintain an unchanging attitude in space; it sticks to its stance regardless of the movement of the vessel on which it is mounted. Gyros that can do this job accurately for short periods are not too hard to build. But when a gyro is used steadily for days...
...Birdie. Broadway musicals, like rural beauty-contest winners, rarely survive a round trip to Hollywood without a loss of innocence. This one, a lampoon on the visit of a gyro-pelvic pop singer to Sweet Apple, Ohio, had an apple-cheekiness about it on the stage that seems slightly worm-eaten on film, and the result is more goof than spoof...
Strong Measure. Republic's proton gyroscope is at present an impractical breadboard model, built mostly of transparent plastic, but even so it works well enough to prove the principle. In a practical instrument, says Milton J. Minneman, head of Republic's gyro project, the coils creating the magnetic field will be attached rigidly to the craft that carries them. As long as the ship or missile follows a perfectly straight course, the protons held in the magnetism will remain electrically quiet. But if the ship turns, their struggle to keep from turning with it will generate an electric...
Most conventional gyros navigate in much the same manner, but Minneman is sure that proton gyroscopes can be made far more sensitive, able to detect the tiny changes of direction that are all-important in missile and space work. Their lack of mechanical moving parts should free them from nearly all tendency to drift, making them valuable for guiding nuclear submarines, which cruise under water for weeks without getting a fix on the sun or the stars. They should be cheaper too. There are elegant instruments on the market, says Minneman, that cost $20,000. He is sure that...