Word: orbiteer
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Unlike other SAC crews that are continuously making training flights and simulated bombing attacks, the airborne alert crew flies a casual course-"high-speed loitering"-that keeps it within striking distance of its targets. On the 24-hour orbit that will range across 11,000 miles or so, the pilot maintains a 400-knot "endurance speed," avoiding sharp turns and other nonessential maneuvers to conserve fuel. SAC's planners calculate that he is within reach of his target for 21 hours-known as "effectiveness time." In the remaining three hours, he is low on fuel and making a scheduled...
...Space Administration, which is testing the X-15, emphasizes that it is a pure research airplane with no immediate applications. But it is no secret that the X-15 is an important step toward controlled re-entry from space. The first humans who return to earth from an orbit will probably depend on parachutes to lower them gently to a passive landing. This is the approach of U.S. Project Mercury and presumably of the Soviet man-in-space program. A more ambitious approach is to glide the returning space craft down through the atmosphere on red-hot wings and steer...
...five-ton Soviet space vehicle carrying a female dog named Chernushka (Blackie) and "other biological objects" last week spun into a low orbit around the earth. Announced the U.S.S.R.: "After fulfilling the outlined research program, the vessel landed on command at a preset area of the Soviet Union on the same...
...establish on them a system that will provide necessary conditions for man's flight.'' All well and good-but on the basis of announced results, hardly more impressive than the Soviets' own feat of last Aug. 20, when they landed two dogs from orbit in a spaceship weighing almost as much as the current...
Pravda also shed some light on how Venusnik was separated from the booster that lifted it piggyback into space. At a predetermined point on orbit around the earth, when the satellite reached a great speed, the booster was separated-whether automatically or by radio signal from earth, the Soviets did not say. The booster stayed on orbit, while Venusnik hurtled on alone. As it broke away from the earth's gravitation, it moved into a solar orbit at 61,000 m.p.h...