Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...either to hit the moon or to orbit around it. So toward the end of the journey a scanning device will pick up the moon's sunlit face, fix its position, and an artificial brain will figure out what to do next. It can light a small steering rocket to correct the course. If a landing on the moon is scheduled, a backward-acting retrorocket can be fired to reduce speed and impact. A different use of the two control rockets will make the vehicle orbit around the moon to report the scenery on its unknown far side...
...Capabilities. The new Minuteman ICBM is a three-stage rocket, 57 ft. long, weighing 65,000 lbs., with predicted 5,500-mile range. It is designed to pack a thermonuclear warhead smaller than that of the liquid-fueled ICBM Atlas, but big enough to take out major targets. Its major components can be broken down to make shorter-range missiles; by itself the missile's third stage could make a useful tactical ballistic missile (TBM) with 500-to 1,000-mile range; its second and third stages would combine to make a 1,500-mile IRBM for use from...
...inside underground launching cylinders without cracking; 2) development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology of a new-type guidance gyro that can be kept running continuously inside the underground slots for as long as two to three years; 3) successful testing by Thiokol Chemical Corp. of the biggest solid-fuel rocket engine ever built, with more than enough thrust to meet ICBM requirements...
...real objective, of course, is manned space flight, and Putt sketched three Air Force projects headed in that direction. The first is the rocket plane X-15 (TIME, March 3), which Putt thinks can be beefed up enough to carry an orbiting human and return him to earth alive. The second is DYNA-SOAR (from "dynamic soaring"), a vehicle that will use what Putt calls "boost-glide flight." It will be boosted up like a rocket, but will have wings and controls. The pilot can permit it to orbit freely around the earth for a while, or he can bring...
...third Air Force project is a true manned orbiter, launched from the ground as the final stage of a great rocket weighing several hundred thousand pounds. Putt does not tell much about it except that it will be "suitable for manned re-entry and recovery...