Word: instruments
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...float at the altitude (about 30,000 ft.) where air pressure is 300 millibars. When it loses buoyancy as helium escapes, an automatic device dumps a little ballast and keeps it from descending. When all the ballast is gone, the balloon eventually sinks, and another automatic device cuts the instrument gondola free and lowers it to earth on a parachute. Instructions on the gondola urge finders to send it to the Navy's research laboratory, but even if the instruments are not recovered, it makes little difference. The balloon will have been tracked all along its flight...
...near the Oregon-California boundary and finally landed near Jackson, Miss. The whole trip (roughly 10,000 miles) took three days and two hours. The balloon's maximum speed when pushed by the high-altitude jet stream was 200 m.p.h. The third balloon cannot be located because of instrument failure, but the next four were launched successfully. When last reported, they were spread out between Japan and north-central Canada...
Ransom! (M-G-M). The ransom that is intended to purchase the life of a kidnaped child is more likely to buy his death. The logic of this statement is inescapable: with the cash in hand, the criminals no longer need the child alive for possible use as an instrument of extortion, and in fact they are much better off with him dead if he is old enough to bear witness against them. Furthermore, a kidnaper faces the death penalty in many states, so what difference does a murder make...
...American) still has high priority. A long-range missile, it has wings, flies in the atmosphere much more slowly than a ballistic missile in dragless space, is therefore more vulnerable to enemy attack. But it has advantages. Carrying a thermonuclear warhead, it steers by the stars. An amazing little instrument picks out a succession of stars, even in daytime, and navigates by them like a ship at sea. Unlike the ICBM, the Navaho can be instructed to zigzag and feint. When the Navaho nears its target, it can feel for the warmth of a darkened city...
...submarine will be specially built with a watertight chamber to hold the great missile. It will poke to the surface an instrument to tell it exactly where it is. Then, at its leisure in darkness and silence, far below wave action, it will open its missile chamber. The missile will tilt to the vertical. When all is ready, it will rise from the sea in a flood of flame and a cloud of steam...