Word: moons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Blood on the Walls. Reading an astronomy pamphlet in the mid-1920s Von Braun saw a drawing of a rocket streaking through space to the moon. It illustrated an article about Pioneer Rocket Theorist Hermann Oberth, now 63 and a consultant to Von Braun's Huntsville team, which venerates him as "The Old Gentleman." Von Braun sent away for a copy of Oberth's classic book, The Rocket to the Interplanetary Spaces, was shocked to discover that it contained mostly mathematical equations. Until then, Von Braun had disliked math, and indeed had flunked it in school. "But," says...
...competitor of the Air Force's Thor-and Von Braun said he needed test vehicles to iron out some of the problems. He wangled permission to build twelve Jupiter-Cs-actually, almost the same jazzed-up Redstones with which he had proposed to put a small moon into orbit...
...obstacles, would have liked nothing better than for him to toss up the first U.S. satellite. Such men as Lieut. General James Gavin, the brainy chief of Research and Development, and Major General John Medaris, the able military commander at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, saw in a successful moon, and its proof of rocket superiority, a way for the Army to break out of its post-Korea roles-and-missions bog-down. But the orders giving Vanguard its exclusive franchise on space were clear and firm, and the Army could not risk defying them...
Plans for voyaging to the moon are a dime a dozen, but according to Astronomy Professor Jan Schilt of Columbia University, they are all aimed at the wrong moon. Last week he explained why man's first round trip to an extraterrestrial body may be to one of the moons of Mars...
...earth's moon is handy, only 238,857 miles away, but its considerable size (2,160 miles diameter) makes it a trap in space. Its gravitational pull is one-sixth as strong as the earth's, which means that unless a spaceship is braked in some way, it will hit the moon's surface at 5,000 m.p.h. Since the moon has no appreciable atmosphere that can be used for braking, the ship will have to cushion its fall by burning precious fuel in its rocket engine. To take off from the moon will cost fuel...