Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sonic control has many possibilities besides smoothing the pressure curve of burning fuel. It may develop into a way to program the complete flight of a solid-propellant missile. Shifting sound levels could vary the thrust to give the rocket better maneuvering capabilities; fuel might also be compounded that does not burn at all unless the rocket's cavity is filled with powerful sound, thus accomplishing total cutoff with the whistle. The big spaceships that NASA plans to toss into space will use clusters of rocket engines. If they are solid fueled and equipped with whistles, they could...
When they reach the hardware stage, Acoustica's engineers will build an experimental rocket engine with a cylindrical cavity running through the mass of fuel (see diagram). A "grain"' of this shape is simple and strong, but if left alone it burns at an uneven rate: as the fuel is consumed, the cavity gets bigger and exposes more surface to the heat. Since the amount of hot gas generated is proportional to the area of burning fuel, the gas pressure keeps rising until just before burnout. The effect is that solid-fuel rockets of this type must have...
...cavity grows bigger, a valve will reduce the amount of gas passing through the whistle. The volume of sound will decrease, and so will the fuel's burning rate. If the valve is manipulated efficiently by some pressure-sensing instrument, it will keep the hot gas inside the rocket at constant pressure from take-off to burnout. Rocket walls can be made lighter, and the bird itself will fly higher...
...Fiddle on Top. Building a lightweight, sound-controlled rocket will not be easy. But Acoustica's engineers think that it is certainly possible. For a sound-making device, they intend to use a Levavasseur whistle that has no moving parts and can be made of heat-resistant material. The rocketeers figure that the best frequency to use is 10,000 cycles, about the pitch of a very high violin note. Yet the volume of sound must be well above the loudest fiddle; an ear-shattering 170 decibels, which is 100 times the sound pressure of a supersonic boom from...
...Oklahoma! the playgoers showed up with transistor sets, listening with earplugs, and at nearby San Quentin the warden postponed the lights-out of 11:15 p.m. until the Giants had won an extra-inning game. It was the same in Los Angeles, 350 miles to the southeast. At a rocket test site, an engineer could barely wait for the blast of an Atlas engine to subside before asking: "What's the inning and the score?" And at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, some 200 men crowded around a television set to watch the Dodgers win. Sighed one office truant...