Word: orbit
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...also a Hungarian version of Catcher in the Rye, in which the author, a 17-year-old schoolboy, admits in disgust: "I can't stand it that the Americans announce the launching of a rocket a month before and the Russians only when it's in orbit...
...Golden Glint. Like Miss Stein, Alice Toklas came from a Jewish background and moved in a wealthy orbit in San Francisco. She considered a career as a concert pianist. Then, at the age of 30, she first laid eyes on Gertrude Stein in Paris. "She was a golden-brown presence," Alice wrote later, "burned by the Tuscan sun and with a golden glint in her warm brown hair." Together they soon set up house on the Rue de Fleurus. While Gertrude labored over her hypnotic experiments with words-the most famous being "Rose is a rose is a rose"-Alice...
Independently launched into orbit by a rocket or carried aloft in a mother spacecraft, lifting bodies will be maneuvered in space with thrusters, much like conventional spacecraft. After they enter the atmosphere, however, the wingless craft will be piloted like gliders to land at existing airports, using their control flaps to maneuver and deriving necessary lift from their aerodynamic shape. Thus the reusable ships could probably become the space age's most utilitarian vehicles...
...astronaut stranded in orbit could transfer to a small lifting body stowed aboard his disabled spacecraft. Detaching the space lifeboat (TIME, March 10), he could fire its retrorocket to drop out of orbit, then glide through the atmosphere to a convenient airport. Larger lifting bodies could ferry men and supplies to space stations and perform orbital missions themselves. The craft's ability to maneuver to an airport and land safely would eliminate the need for the costly 10,000-man recovery force that now must be deployed for each space mission...
While studying Mercury's surface temperatures, Soter paused to consider the effects of the planet's elliptical orbit, which causes it to speed up as it nears its closest approach (28.7 million miles) to the sun, and to slow down as it moves away to a maximum distance of 43.6 million miles. About four days before Mercury comes closest to the sun, Soter says in the current issue of Sky and Telescope, its increased angular velocity around the sun just matches its rotational rate about its own axis. To an observer on Mercury, the sun at this point...