Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Obeying his electronic command, eleven of the small rockets in the bucket fired, blasting away the nose of the Redstone. They burned for six seconds. Two seconds after that, three more rockets fired, pushing free the empty shells of the first eleven. The central rocket carrying the satellite fired last. It spurted ahead and alone, and reached orbital velocity of more than 18,000 m.p.h...
Those who do see it as a faint, speeding star will notice that it does not wax and wane like the conspicuous rocket that accompanied Sputnik I. This is because its spin stabilization keeps it from tumbling. Its direction, like that of a free gyroscope, is fixed in space. As it rounds the earth, its axis points at the same distant star...
Sophisticated Instruments. The orbiting body, including the burned-out rocket, is 80 in. long, 6 in. in diameter, and weighs 30.8 lbs. The satellite proper weighs 18.13 lbs.; of this, its steel outer skin weighs 7.5 lbs., and the rest, nearly 11 lbs., is the payload of instruments. These weights do not compare with Sputnik I (184 lbs. without its rocket) or Sputnik II (1,120 lbs. with dog and rocket), but the Explorer's instruments are so light and sophisticated that they may send as much information from space as their Russian rivals...
...Moon. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Army's satellite is that its success was not due to new or startling equipment. The Redstone, which has long been in production, is essentially an improved German V2. The Jupiter-C version, with its spinning bucket of small rockets, is not new, either. Neither are its internal guidance instruments, its attitude-control device or its tracking systems. Nearly everything except the satellite itself and perhaps the rocket attached to it was "off the shelf...
According to Dr. Wernher von Braun, the same equipment plus a few more tricks can put 50% more weight on orbit. But he and other Army men point out that the Redstone is a comparatively small rocket, not nearly so powerful as the ones that launched the Russian Sputniks, or as military rockets-Atlas, Thor, etc.-now being tested in the U.S. Dr. Jack E. Froelich of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the Army's Jupiter rocket (not to be confused with the Jupiter-C) could boost a much bigger satellite into an orbit, or even send...