Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fact that one of us may have a bigger bomb, a faster plane or a more powerful rocket than the other at any particular time no longer adds up to an advantage. No nation in the world today is strong enough to issue an ultimatum to another without running the risk of destruction...
When U.S. rocket engineers talk about the bright possibilities of solid-fuel rockets, they always have to pause over one big requirement: how to control the fuel's burning rate. A current system is to shape the charge, measure the ingredients-and hope. This week Acoustica Associates, Inc. of Plainview, N.Y. announced an initial $85,188 contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to explore a radical new control that is as exciting as it is simple. The company thinks that it can handle solid fuels by filling the rocket with sound-plain, ordinary noise...
...Rockets get their zip by means of a restrained explosion; the rapidly burning propellant must generate hot gases at precisely the right pressure. If the pressure is too low, the rocket does not fly; too high, and it bursts like a bomb. Very slight defects or miscalculations can raise the pressure to the danger point. The rocket can explode if the nozzle is a few thousandths of an inch too small. A solid propellant may crack, sharply increasing the burning rate. Unburned propellant can block the nozzle, or flame can burn a hole in the thin casing. As any Cape...
...list be kept secret so that youthful amateurs will not get any new ideas. Particularly touchy are propellants that must be mixed hot. Another bad actor, already well known to most kids: ordinary household match heads, which are apt to explode disastrously while being crammed into a makeshift rocket chamber...
...that tell the hurricane watchers how fast the storm is moving, its pressure, etc. A second gadget still under test is a big, inflated sphere that will ride the surface ocean waves in the eye, broadcasting similar information at sea level. Still a third promising device: a camera-carrying rocket that flies high enough to bring down pictures of an entire hurricane, several hundred miles across, give weathermen their first complete look at a big blow...