Word: rocketmen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...office equipment, and Von Braun learned early in the game the techniques of flimflamming the bureaucrats, e.g., it was a rare budget official who realized that Kummersdorf's request for funds to buy an "appliance for milling wooden dowels up to 10 millimeters in diameter" meant that the rocketmen needed a pencil sharpener. Years later, during the darkest days of the U.S. Army's missile program, Wernher von Braun was to put such Kummersdorf experience to historic...
...face gashed (he still has a scar above his lip). Von Braun and Dornberger stayed three weeks in a Bavarian mountain lodge, finally sent Von Braun's younger brother, Magnus, bicycling downhill to invite the Americans to come and capture Peenemünde's top rocketmen. (Says Magnus: "I was the youngest, I spoke the best English, and I was the most expendable.") The U.S. Army was delighted to accept that invitation and, in a project known as Operation Paperclip, selected Von Braun and 120 of his best team members to go to the U.S. under contract with...
Launching of the Russian satellite is man's first successful attempt to navigate the ocean of space around the earth. Despite the chagrin of U.S. rocketmen, few disparaged the Russian achievement. In at least three important ways-weight, orbit and altitude-the sputnik* outclasses the U.S. satellite, which is still on the ground...
...fast the rocketmen fly depends on how soon they learn to produce better fuels to power their engines. The great debate in the industry today, much like the old argument over air-cooled v. liquid-cooled engines, is over solid rocket propellants v. liquid rocket propellants. Most big rockets, including both Intercontinental and two of the three Intermediate-Range missiles, now use liquid fuels with an oxidizer such as nitric acid or hydrogen peroxide. Liquid systems have produced the highest thrust-weight ratio (80 Ibs. for each i Ib. of weight), but they require an enormously complex system of tanks...