Word: orbiteer
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...major scientific sense, the orbital flight program seems almost self-defeating. Both Russia and the U.S. insist that they will not attempt to place a man in orbit until they can reasonably guarantee his safe return to earth. But when problems of thrust, guidance, artificial environment, communications, reentry and recovery have been sufficiently solved to permit this assurance, the program already will have proved its point: that man can survive in a satellite. Thus, to many scientists, the stunt of actually putting a man in orbit then seems scarcely worth the effort, risk and financial burden...
...special lightweight oxygen bottle, for instance, took 18 weeks, cost more than $20,000. The Russians, whose rockets generate an estimated 800,000 Ibs. of thrust (v. Atlas' 360,000 Ibs.), had few weight restrictions, grabbed a huge advantage in the race to place a man in orbit. But enforced early miniaturization may pay off handsomely for the U.S. in exploration of deep space, when the huge distances involved (240,000 miles to the moon, 42 million miles to Mars) will create a more critical relationship between thrust and payload weight...
...admit the inevitable, and in space travel the unhappy inevitable may be that man can never journey "safely" to the moon and planets. But scientists are making plans just the same. The huge, multistage rocket with which Russia launched its Dognik could boost a 600-lb. capsule into orbit around the moon, and the size of the capsule can be increased by 100 Ibs. for each additional 20,000 Ibs. of thrust that Soviet scientists can coax from the boost er. Says a U.S. engineer: "The Russians probably could soft-land an instrument package on the moon within six months...
...requires complete re-entry reliability, something neither Russia nor the U.S. can claim. "All we can do now is get capsules down with parachutes," says one U.S. scientist. "Ideally, we will want to land the full vehicle and its occupants, re-use the vehicle for other flights." Probable method: orbital reentry. Rather than plunge directly into earth's atmosphere and risk crushing G forces or a fiery disintegration from friction, a spaceship would ease into a wide orbit around the earth, cut its speed with retrorockets, and circle slowly to a landing. Orbital reentry also would permit the space...
This is the landing system that will be employed by Dyna-Soar, the Air Force's $700 million, Boeing-built, maneuverable space vehicle, scheduled for first flight tests about 1964. Designed to be fired into orbit atop a Titan missile, Dyna-Soar is the closest thing to a spaceship in development now in the U.S. The dog capsule appears to put Russia well ahead of the U.S. in spaceship manufacture; its massive weight indicates that the passenger cabin probably will be large enough to support a crew of three men for a sustained period of flight...