Word: payloaders
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...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...
National prestige may make it important to shoot humans through space, but an actual landing on the moon or a planet is about the only mission for which a human crew would be a profitable payload. Some of the scientists at Denver thought that the first landings should be made by instruments to feel out the ground, but all agreed that only the alert and flexible human brain can do full justice to unexpected phenomena. Even on the nearby moon, the unexpected is to be expected. No one knows for sure what the actual surface is like...
...Texas, left to tinker around, pretty much by themselves, with old V-25, moved no closer to space. The Korean war changed that: in 1950 the German scientists were rushed bag and baggage to Huntsville (see box) with orders to build the Army a long-range missile with nuclear-payload capability. Result: the Redstone missile, successfully launched at Cape Canaveral...
...have to cushion its fall by burning precious fuel in its rocket engine. To take off from the moon will cost fuel too, about one-sixth as much as was needed to escape from the earth. So an earth-to-moon spaceship will have to carry a very large payload of fuel if its crew hopes to get home again...
Sophisticated Instruments. The orbiting body, including the burned-out rocket, is 80 in. long, 6 in. in diameter, and weighs 30.8 lbs. The satellite proper weighs 18.13 lbs.; of this, its steel outer skin weighs 7.5 lbs., and the rest, nearly 11 lbs., is the payload of instruments. These weights do not compare with Sputnik I (184 lbs. without its rocket) or Sputnik II (1,120 lbs. with dog and rocket), but the Explorer's instruments are so light and sophisticated that they may send as much information from space as their Russian rivals...