Word: missilemen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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WHILE Correspondent Rees was "'gathering material for the cover story, Science Editor Jonathan Norton Leonard touched base with old friends and acquaintances among the Germans at Redstone and the U.S. technologists who are today's missilemen. To them, he is a writer who speaks their strange tongue and can translate it for laymen. In conformity with established TIME practice, the story was shown to Pentagon authorities to make sure that the printed version would contain no violation of security...
This is the nightmare of the missilemen: It is 1962, and the U.S. is lagging in its development of war's newest weapon, the long-range guided missile. From Moscow to the apprehensive free world comes a terse radio announcement: for the next ten days, a 200-mile-square area in the landless South Pacific is a danger area; shipmasters and airplane pilots traverse it at their peril. The U.S. Navy and Air Force take tip surveillance of the area; radar tracking crews from Alaska to New Guinea stand by their gear. On one of these days, a small...
Atomic Defense. So far in warfare, every new weapon has brought forth a counter-weapon. Missilemen suspect-they even hope-that this will happen again. Their best hope is in atom-armed birds, whose fireballs may be more de-tructive in space than in the atmosphere. Some believe that they can even destroy an ICBM striking at 16,000 m.p.h. Such missiles can be tracked by their heat and ionized trails, and their trajectories determined. The "reaction time" will be frighteningly short-only a few minutes...
Meteor study is also useful to missilemen in another way. When meteors shoot through the air, they get white hot and most of them evaporate. This same thing happens to some extent with guided missiles. The German V-2 actually lost some of its metal by evaporation while descending through the atmosphere. By learning more about this effect, the meteormen hope to help the missile designers keep their "birds" from evaporating...
...military scientists have tackled so far-more difficult even than atomic bombs. The program has already drained the country dry of specially qualified scientists. Every missile plant and laboratory has a welcome for the dewiest young technician. When large-scale production begins, the pinch will be even tighter. Some missilemen think that the Government should shut down the television industry to free electronic men for guided-missile work...