Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...only .01 lb., which is less than one grasshopper-power, but no one expects a true space engine to provide the massive thrust that is needed to free a heavy rocket from the earth's gravitation. Engines designed for use after a vehicle has been lofted into orbit need only a little thrust, but they must exert it for a long time, using only a whiff of fuel. Alfred E. Kunen, director of Republic's Plasma Propulsion Laboratory, explained that the plasma pinch engine will get its electricity from solar cells and store it temporarily in a battery...
...space program, Project Mercury, scored its greatest triumph last week, when with infinite precision, the robot-manned Mercury capsule MA4 was boosted into orbit, permitted to circle the earth, then brought down and recovered in good condition. Despite all the excitement stirred up by the short, sub-orbital flights of Astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom, last week's achievement was far more significant...
...Atlas liquid-fuel rocket that put the capsule in orbit had been a cause of concern in Project Mercury because of two disastrous earlier failures. But last week's Atlas was beefed up for its job, and it performed perfectly; the MA4 accelerated surely into its planned orbit. Strapped in the capsule instead of a man sat an oblong box that performed most of an astronaut's functions: it consumed oxygen, excreted carbon dioxide and water vapor, and it also talked-feeding the recorded voice of NASA Communications Engineer Howard Kyle into a microphone to test the Mercury...
Vastly cheered by MA-4's triumph, NASA space engineers feel that a manned orbital flight is now all but accomplished. Within weeks, they will probably make final tests by putting a chimpanzee into orbit. If the chimp fares well, a human astronaut may follow before the end of the year...
...Russians deliver big H-bombs? The Soviet rocket system that can loft a five-ton capsule into orbit can certainly deliver several times that weight anywhere on earth. Russian-built loo-megaton bombs would not be too heavy to be carried by rocket to New York, Washington or Phoenix. One such bomb could surely destroy New York, and its fallout would kill most people exposed within 100 miles or more downwind...