Word: saturn
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...year trip to Mars by the 1980s. Many scientists, noting that such a project would cost perhaps $60 billion, prefer less expensive unmanned probes beyond Mars. Last week 23 space scientists strongly urged "grand tours" of the outer planets in the mid-1970s. At that time, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto will be so aligned that a spacecraft could sweep past at least three of them in a single, multibillion-mile journey. This rare planetary configuration, the panel noted, will not occur again for another 179 years...
Sputnik, but spending has already declined from its 1966 peak of $5.9 billion. Wernher Von Braun, whose team was responsible for the Saturn boosters, argues that unless the nation embarks on another Apollo-size program, the U.S. stands to suffer a "tragic loss of a national asset." He fears that NASA's skilled engineers and scientists may be dispersed after the last of the nine remaining Apollo missions is flown in 1972. The space team has already shrunk from 400,000 in 1966 to 140,000 today, and the group might be difficult to rebuild. "To continue to attract...
...companies involved are overwhelmingly dependent on the space program, most of them are experiencing a slump. At North American Rockwell, principal contractor for the Apollo capsule, 5,200 research and development staffers have been laid off or shifted to other projects. The Boeing Co., builder of the first-stage Saturn boosters, must soon let go part of its 10,000-man Apollo team. The impact would be most severe in towns like Huntsville, Ala., where Saturn rockets are assembled. Space has changed the onetime "Watercress Capital of the World" from a town of 16,000 to a lively city...
...gather at the courthouse square to greet Rocket Engineer Wernher Von Braun. Von Braun was hoisted off his feet by the sheriff and three city councilmen and carried through the cheering crowd-an experience, he said, that "must have been as thrilling as riding one of our Saturn 5s into space...
...Venus, it will use the Venusian gravity to boost itself on toward Mercury, the sun's closest and smallest satellite. In the late 1970s, the so-called "outer planets" will be so favorably aligned that a spacecraft passing Jupiter could use its gravity to push on toward Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -a "grand tour" that would cover billions of miles and take as long as ten years...