Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nation's confidence in the fall of 1957. And last week came the news of two more big strides in space-military technology: a 142-lb. paddle-wheel satellite that uses solar energy to power its transmitters and a monitoring system capable of detecting and tracking missile and rocket firings far beyond the range of the keenest-eyed radar (see SCIENCE...
...countdown was perfect. Up from the launch pad of Cape Canaveral at 10:23 one morning last week roared a 90-ft., 52½-ton Thor-Able rocket, lifting cleanly into an overcast sky with steadily increasing acceleration. Two minutes and 40 seconds later the second stage fired smoothly, then the third. Out from the sides of the globular pay load unfolded four strange paddles. As the "paddlewheel satellite" tumbled through space at 171 revolutions per minute, 8,000 solar cells in the 20-inch-square vanes picked up the sun's energy to charge the chemical batteries, send...
...Pocket Rocket. Waddling happily to the rostrum of the Kremlin's marble-walled Sverdlov Hall, he greeted reporters with a grin as broad as the arc of a peasant's scythe. Even his normally glum interpreters, press officers and sword-bearers were smilingly cordial. For questioners, Khrushchev had a full armory of chuckles, solemnities and playful jabs. Did he expect to address Congress? "I do not know whether the U.S. Congressmen want to listen to me . . ." When the A.P.'s Preston Grover asked if Eisenhower would be invited to visit Soviet missile bases, Khrushchev turned...
...National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported: "The paddle wheel is doing well. It is converting solar energy into electrical energy. The signals are coming in loud and clear." If its perigee edges in too close to the earth, the paddle-wheel satellite still has a 5-lb. kick rocket that can be fired to elongate its orbit; last week's launching was such a perfect shot that the kicker was not fired...
...wouldn't the globe-girdling radio waves also bounce off the trail of ionized gases left by a high-altitude rocket or the cloud of ionized gases created by a nuclear explosion? Then, if there were even a slight difference in the returning echo patterns-and if receivers could be made sensitive enough to detect the difference -monitoring oscilloscopes could display telltale evidence of what the waves had encountered on their travels. Since these radio waves bounce around the earth, the new method would overcome the limitation of radar, whose line-of-sight waves travel in straight lines, thus...