Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first two sentry satellites were rigged to orbit on opposite sides of the earth, thus reducing the probability that the earth will ever be between both of them and a space test. Next year the U.S. intends to put eight more sentries in orbit. While they watch for treaty violations, they will make themselves peacefully useful by reporting bursts of X rays coming from...
NASA also blamed private industry for crucial delays in the $384 million Mercury program. As originally scheduled, the first American astronaut would have blasted into orbit as early as April of 1960, nearly a year before the Soviet Union's first manned flight. Instead, John Glenn's three-orbit trip was delayed 22 months. In that interval, said the report, "time and money were expended in Mercury to rectify cases where improper materials were found in the systems because someone had failed to follow the approved materials list." NASA singled out no particular companies from the total...
Tricky Rendezvous. Other engineering ifs proliferate. The moon project as it is now planned includes a rendezvous in lunar orbit, during which a small spacecraft that has landed on the moon will soar up and mate with a main spacecraft orbiting overhead. The problems involved are all but incredible. No space vehicles have yet accomplished rendezvous, even in earth orbit with bases near by and massive, quick-witted computers on hand to do their navigation. The Russians may have at least attempted the trick, but the U.S. has not, and it will not even make its first try until...
Many skeptics believe that the Russians will never cooperate in a meaningful way; to do so would require revealing too much about their military missiles and their rumored plans to put a large manned space station into orbit. One Pentagon faction insists that the main Russian space effort has always been military, and that the U.S. is risking disaster by putting top emphasis on nonmilitary space exploits...
Just what the U.S. military would do in space is not entirely clear. Aside from sophisticated surveillance satellites, there seem to be few military space projects that appeal to such tough-minded civilians as Secretary of Defense Mc-Namara. An orbiting atom bomb might scare some people as it swept over their countries; but if it were called down on an enemy city, it would be no more destructive than a single ballistic warhead. It would be vulnerable too, for its orbit could be calculated and small atom-armed rockets could be shot up to wreck it. Orbiting military posts...