Word: orbiteer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...words were inspiring but many a qualified scientist, even as he heard them, was moved to a vague unease. How could so rigid a time limit be set for so awesome a task? Still, the Russians had just put a man in orbit, and the disaster at the Bay of Pigs was embarrassingly fresh. A confident U.S. gesture seemed demanded by U.S. pride. "Three or four years ago, we had considerable worries about the Russians," remembers one space scientist. "Picking the man-on-the-moon program was a good choice. If we had settled for a lesser goal, they might...
Space itself is full of unevaluated perils. Until U.S. satellite Explorer I climbed into orbit in 1958, no one knew that the earth is surrounded by the Van Allen belt of deadly radiation. No one knows yet how the radiation fluctuates in position and strength, or the effect it may have on human bodies and brains...
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...