Word: icbms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...project called for prodigies of technology. But the most formidable problem of all was one that should have been familiar to anyone who ever saw a meteor turn into a trail of fire in the night sky. It was the problem of "re-entry": how to get an ICBM warhead, with its protective nose cone, back through the earth's atmosphere without its being burned into sky-streaking embers. As history may one day note, it was at an Ithaca, N.Y. cocktail party that one of the most significant early steps toward success was taken...
...Someone. Among the guests at that party was a trustee of Ithaca's Cornell University named Victor Emanuel. Emanuel was also board chairman of Avco Corp., which was already deeply interested in the U.S. ICBM program. He fell into conversation about the project's difficulties-particularly that of testing re-entry techniques in earthly laboratories. Said one of the group, pointing to a heavy-shouldered man: "I believe we have someone right here who can help...
...perhaps more than anyone else rates the title of "Mr. Nose Cone," had to offer was experience and expertness in a testing device known as the shock tube. The problems of nose-cone re-entry were fearsome enough on paper. It was understood all too well that an ICBM re-entry body of cone and warhead would have to crash back into the earth's atmosphere at near-meteor speed of 15,000 m.p.h., with enough motion of energy to vaporize five times its weight of iron. Piling up ahead of the re-entry body would be a high...
Along such relatively simple lines. General Electric built most of the early nose cones and, considering the state of the art, they were successful enough in the first Thor and Atlas missiles. But they were heavy-and in an ICBM, every ounce of nose cone takes away from the warhead which is the rocket's real reason for being. And the blunt-nosed cones began slowing down while still high in the atmosphere, making them more vulnerable to antimissile missiles as they descended toward earth...
Also in the visible future is the manned spacecraft that, with techniques based on military nose-cone research, will bring its human travelers safely down from orbit or from an interplanetary journey. Strangely, the manned spacecraft in some ways presents fewer problems than the ICBM. Where an ICBM enters the atmosphere at about a 20° angle with a sudden, explosive shock, a space vehicle can come into the atmosphere flat, keeping its deceleration and temperature comparatively...