Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sphere of Nothing. When the rocket reaches the orbit, the nitrogen inflates the balloon and pops it out of its container. When all the gas has left the capsule, the balloon is erected into a sphere 30 in. in diameter. The pressure inside it (.2 lb.) is enough to stretch the wrinkles out of the aluminum film and make it mirror smooth. After doing this job, the nitrogen escapes into the vacuum outside. O'Sullivan wants to get rid of it because the balloon may be punctured by a meteor, and a jet of gas escaping from it might...
...Sullivan's modest sphere would not be conspicuous to the naked eye, but it could be picked up easily with low-power moonwatch telescopes. Its great virtue would be its short life. Even on a comparatively high orbit, the tenuous bubble of nothing would be slowed by faint traces of air on the threshold of space. Following a circular course 300 miles above the earth, it would live for only about ten days, and its rapid changes of speed and altitude would measure air density much more accurately than the slow responses of heavier satellites...
...three mutually intersecting surfaces of electrically conducting material. They re: ect radio or radar waves with extraordinary efficiency; small ones stand out on a radarscope as if they were heavy bombers. The NACA plan is to put one of these large but almost immaterial objects on an orbit so high that residual air will not slow it appreciably. At twilight it will look as bright as the North Star, and radars pointed at it will show it plainly. They can follow it on its course and measure its distance and direction continuously...
...saleswise (one reason: it smelled so foul that it was dubbed "synthetic halitosis"). But since the age of space, the company has rocketed because Thiokol is a chief component in most solid rocket fuels. Thiokol powered the second, third and fourth stages of Explorer I and III into orbit, supplies the propellant for a whole family of missiles. This week word leaked that Thiokol is the hottest candidate for the whopping contracts to produce the propulsion systems for the Army's Pershing missile (TIME, April 7) and the Air Force's Bomarc, which will be converted from liquid...
Russia's rocket Satellite Sputnik II has apparently left its orbit and plunged to earth "blowing up in the sky," according to John White, Director of Public Information at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Institute...