Word: orbiter
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...except one. It came from a 94.8-lb. paddle-wheeled ball that last week rose from the surface of the earth and vaulted through space. The destiny of Pioneer V lay in the unknown void-as far as 186 million miles away-in a 527 million-mile sun-circling orbit between the earth and Venus (see SCIENCE). And of all the machinery thrown into the heavens since the space age began only 29 months ago, Pioneer V alone has a voice that will thunder through history. On earth, scientists press buttons that ask questions, and Pioneer V will deliver...
Slower Is Closer. To shoot at Venus or its orbit, a probe must be shot in the opposite direction to the motion of the earth on its orbit around the sun. Most of its speed will be expended in pulling away from the earth's gravitation. Any speed left over will be subtracted from the orbital speed (66,600 m.p.h.) that the probe had-as every mountain, building and man has-as part of the earth. Left behind in space with reduced speed, the probe will curve inward toward...
...first reconnaissance satellite designed to take advantage of this fact. Called Midas (from Missile Defense Alarm System), the satellite carried infrared detectors, which will pick up a missile's hot exhaust trail as it rises above the hazy, moisture-laden lower atmosphere. From a satellite on a high orbit, the heat can be detected several thousand miles away...
Last week's Midas splashed into the Atlantic when the second stage failed to fire. But an operational Midas, presumably flying on a polar orbit, will be able to report a missile trail by radio signals that can be received at great distances by U.S. listening stations. If two or more satellites make a simultaneous report, the missile's position can be automatically computed with good accuracy. The Air Force is convinced that six or eight Midas sentries can keep the whole earth under surveillance, reporting almost instantly when and where a possible hostile missile has been launched...
Wilson's Ripper is Austin Nunne, a Baudelairean esthete and homosexual sadist. Into his orbit drifts a would-be writer named Gerard Sorme, drawn to Nunne partly out of satanic excitement and partly because he seems to share the same ideas about what makes life not worth living. (Sorme is working on a book on "the modern sense of dispossession" that sounds remarkably like Wilson's Outsider.) With the help of "a Mozart symphony, a hot frankfurter sausage, the smell of acetone," Gerard sometimes gets "a new grip on being alive...