Word: moone
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world's store of knowledge, but the great world public probably could not care less about such discoveries as the energy of cosmic rays or the number of electrons in space. Only a spectacular and extremely difficult bit of rocketeering, say a manned trip around the moon, will top Russian spacemen in the eyes of the world...
...acceleration, shock, vibration, spinning, heat, cold and radiation. Best of all, they do not demand to be brought home alive. They transmit to earth all the information that they have gathered in space: then they die as streaks of fire without reproach or protest. Or they land on the moon or Mars and stay there, reporting faithfully until their radios fade...
...relatively useless cargo. But scientists whose imaginations run beyond the immediate future do not scoff at men in space. There will come a time, the scientists believe, when men will be needed because of the human capability for judgment and improvisation. A collection of instruments landed on the moon can do only the specific jobs for which it is designed. It can look around with TV eyes, scan the close and forbidding horizon, feel the ground for moonquakes, perhaps examine pinches of moon dust for chemical content. It can do almost anything that its designers want it to do-except...
...collection of instruments, for example, could be expected to show interest in a book with platinum leaves inscribed in an unknown language and left by an unknown race in a lunar crevice one million years ago. The moon is unlikely to have such objects on it, but it may hide things that are just as startling. Mars should be even richer in surprises. It may shelter subtle kinds of life, or relics of life, that no instrument would appreciate. Voyages to Mars will always be unsatisfactory until men report what they see there...
...will always yearn to travel in Major Gagarin's wake, to see the blue band around the curve of the earth. Eventually, perhaps 10, 100, or 1,000 years from now, a great spaceship will carry men far out in the solar system. They will learn whether the moon and the planets have value as real estate. They may tinker with the offensive atmosphere of Venus, perhaps making it suitable for human breathing. They may develop human subtypes that will enjoy Venus as it is. They may learn to live in space itself, cruising the solar system in artificial...