Word: mooned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most unfortunate feature of the moon's climate is its airlessness, which will always be hard on humans who try to colonize the moon. Last week Dr. Peter A. Cas-truccio, director of Westinghouse Electric Corp.'s newly formed Astronautics Institute, pointed out one way to turn the moon's lack of atmosphere into an asset. Manufacturers of electronic tubes, he said, go to pains to pump air out of them so that the air will not interfere with the electrons. On the moon this is not necessary. The whole moon has a better vacuum than...
...major needs of a lunar colony will be electric power. Importing chemical fuel would be prohibitively expensive. Even a nuclear power plant would be an almost impossible cargo for earth-moon transportation. But the moon's vacuum, says Dr. Castruccio, makes conventional power plants unnecessary. The essential parts of a photoelectric tube, which on earth must be enclosed in vacuum-tight glass, can be laid out on the moon's airless surface, where they will produce electricity whenever sunlight hits them...
...lunar power plant (which he calls an "electron farm") is nothing but a thin plastic sheet coated with cesium or some other material that gives off electrons when struck by light. On earth these electrons would get nowhere; they would be captured immediately by atmospheric atoms. On the airless moon the electrons could be collected by a wire mesh. Flowing out of the mesh, they would form a direct electric current...
Canada's Christopher Plummer, a talented actor (Broadway's The Lark, TV's Little Moon of Alban), arrives in turn-of-the-century Miami, where he harkens to tales about Cottonmouth (Burl Ives), a red-bearded snake charmer off in the Everglades whose band of swamp angels (including such old Thespians as ex-Pug Tony Galento, Clown Emmett Kelly, Jockey Sammy Renick) pick off the wildlife like hungry dogs in a horsemeat factory. Modern hunters would do well to study their technique: every bird they shoot falls within 2 ft. of their boats...
ROCKET ENGINE of 1.5 million Ibs. thrust, enough to send big payload to the moon, will be built by North American Aviation's Rocketdyne Division. Under new Army contract, company will put together a cluster of eight engines, using Thor and Jupiter components. Engine will be ready for tests by late 1959. Rocketdyne also won recent Air Force contract for 1,000,000-lb.-thrust engine (TIME...