Word: rockets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Germans. Even after "the few" of the R.A.F. rose to blast the myth of Nazi Luftwaffe invincibility in World War II, Hermann Göring's "tigers" continued to command respect as fighting airmen, and Hitler's scientists set a hot pace in plane and rocket development...
Space flight enthusiasts talk confidently about trips to the moon, but so far no rocket, even an unmanned one, has climbed more than 0.25% of the distance-about 600 miles, unofficially credited to the Lockheed X17. The first vehicle to make a really big stride into space will probably be a cheap, unstreamlined, unglamorous, four-stage job assembled out of familiar rocket hardware by Aeronutronic Systems, Inc., a Ford Motor Co. subsidiary at Glendale, Calif. Its gimmick: it will start at 100,000 ft. from a balloon...
Battling Air. When rockets are fired from the earth's surface, they cannot start fast. If they move too fast too soon, the dense, low-altitude air battles back ferociously, wasting the rocket's fuel and heating the structure to the disaster point. But slow starting has disadvantages too. Rocket motors are less efficient at slow speed, and a slow-starting vehicle wastes energy because it has to carry the fuel it needs for later acceleration to high altitude against the earth's gravitation...
Aeronutronic's rocket, named Far Side, lacks the streamlined style of surface-starting rockets. Its first stage is a cluster of four Recruit solid-propellant rocket motors, made by Thiokol Chemical Corp. at Elkton, Md., each with 40,000 lbs. of thrust. Stage Two is a single Recruit. Stage Three is four clustered Arrow II rockets (thrust: 250 lbs. each). The last stage is a single Arrow II which pushes the payload-a tube containing 3.5 lbs. of instruments-to final speed. The whole assembly looks like a graceless bundle of pipes, weighs...
...miles above the earth, where the air has one-hundredth the density of sea-level air. A radio signal from the ground will set an igniting system in motion. The four Stage One Recruits will roar into life, concentrating their 160,000 lbs. of thrust on the small rocket and snapping it upward with 70 g. of acceleration. It will shoot through the filmy balloon as if it were not there. The first stage fuel will be burned in 1.5 sec., giving Far Side a speed of 3,500 m.p.h. Stage Two, igniting a few seconds after the separation...