Word: planet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...anything but quiet on Planet Earth. Under the impetus of the satellite Explorer's fiery success came the first federal space agency, the Senate's first space committee, the first Democratic and Republican attempts to stake political claims on space-and a full-throttle U.S. Army drive to exploit its satellite success after months of telling itself that it was the Pentagon's stepchild. Army brass marched with a color guard into a Capitol Hill hearing room to present a new service flag to the House Military Appropriations Subcommittee. Patrols of Army public-relations officers prowled Pentagon...
...nearness to space as Explorer radioed back its readings (see SCIENCE). And of the legions of scientists, generals, admirals, engineers and administrators at work on missiles and man-made moons, German-born Wernher von Braun, 45, best personified man's accelerating drive to rise above the planet. Von Braun, in fact, has only one interest: the conquest of space, which he calls man's greatest venture. To pursue his lifelong dream, he has helped Adolf Hitler wage a vengeful new kind of war, has argued against bureaucracy in two languages and campaigned against official apathy and public disbelief...
...Attention. Von Braun returned to Peenemünde to rain V-2 ruin on London (when the first V-2 smashed London, Spaceman von Braun remarked to a friend that the rocket had worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet). But the war was already lost for Nazi Germany. Caught between the advancing Russian and U.S. armies, Von Braun and most of his tried, tested rocket team decided to go with the West. They fueled trucks with rocket alcohol and headed south. Von Braun had printed official-looking stickers with the mysterious letters VZBV-standing for some fictional...
...know, some think of the earth as a safe and comfortable planet, and they say that space is a hostile environment. This is not really true. Earth is protected by its blanket of atmosphere, to be sure, but it is a disorderly place, and unpredictable. It is full of storms and winds, of fogs and ice, of earthquakes. It is also full of people -people with thermonuclear bombs...
...lobbied with Congressmen, accepted every interview and television date he could get, and kept the Army's team from falling apart. Von Braun eloquently describes the meaning of space travel: "It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven...