Word: moon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Both the Russians (with buttoned lips) and the U.S. (with considerable public discussion) are preparing to probe the moon. Lieut. General Samuel E. Anderson declared last week (and was sternly shushed by the Pentagon) that the Air Force will fly three lunar probes this year, in August, September and October. A lunar probe means neither a landing nor a circumlunar trip with a manned spaceship, both enormously difficult, but an impact on the moon or passage around it by an unmanned Sputnik-like vehicle. A one-way trip ending in impact is probably the easiest, but many scientists oppose...
Eighth grade students learn enough chemistry to determine simple compounds of some twenty-odd elements, enough astronomy to calculate roughly the winter solstice with hand-made tools or to ask why the orbit of the moon is not a true ellipse, and enough geometry and trigonometry to construct very accurate maps on conic and other projections...
Phases of the Moon...
Meanwhile, they are also studying the phases of the moon, learning how it travels about the earth and why its orbit takes an elliptical shape. This leads to a study of Kepler's Law and its application to the orbits of artificial satellites. From here on it is only a few steps to the concepts of gravity, mass, and specific gravity...
...thousands of America's gifted children turned out of high school incubators with a diploma, a pat on the back, perhaps a tear or two, and three or four years of intellectual stasis behind him. His are the narrow shoulders upon which the nation expects to climb to the moon, to harness atomic energy for peaceful purposes, to solve the questions of sociological change, and to patch up the globular balloon for another generation of battering. He is also our greatest tragedy...