Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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SPACESHIP ORDERS will come soon from Washington. Decision now is being made on which companies are to get multimillion-dollar contracts for "Dyna-Soar" (from dynamic soaring), i.e., vehicle that will be boosted up like a rocket but will have wings and controls to permit pilot to orbit freely around globe, then glide back to earth...
When the Explorers' orbits were carrying them near the earth, they both reported reasonable numbers of cosmic rays, around 30 per second, but as they climbed up toward their apogees the count came faster. At 1,100 kilometers (684 miles) the tubes registered as high as 140 counts per second. Then a strange thing happened. As the satellites climbed even higher, the transmitters reported no rays at all. During orbit after orbit the counter of Explorer III was silent for 15 minutes. When the satellites swung down again to lower levels, they resumed reporting reasonable numbers of cosmic rays...
Voyages to distant planets seemed blissfully easy a few years ago, because they were theoretical. Now that satellites, the first crude spaceships, are actually on orbit, spacemen are being asked to deliver real transportation, and a voyage even to the nearby moon looks disturbingly hard. The Astronautics Symposium sponsored in Denver last week by the Air Force and the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences heard more about the staggering difficulties of space flight than about its rosy prospects...
...tremendous amount of work must be done before even one man can ride an earth satellite said Dr. William H. Pickering, director of the Army's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A payload of several thousand pounds must be placed on orbit. The re-entry problem must be solved in a way that will give the human passenger a fair chance to survive. Many new instruments and gadgets must be developed. "Granted that we have done all these things," said Pickering, "it seems to me that we should now ask the question: 'What do we gain by placing...
...Army will fire from Cape Canaveral a Jupiter-C or hopped-up Jupiter that Army Spaceman Wernher von Braun believes will hit the moon. Less optimistic Army missileers expect their missile will either graze the moon-and message back valuable readings on gases around it-or make a lunar orbit. But the Air Force will probably be able to try an orbiting moonshot first. Ready for launching within a matter of weeks will be a Thor-Vanguard hybrid similar to the lost missile fired from the Cape last week in a nose-cone configuration test...