Word: saturn
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There were an incredible number of parts to that engine--it didn't seem possible that all of them could be depended on to work. But the IB's big brother, the Saturn V, had infinitely more parts and was a brand-new rocket, not a collection of dependable old Redstones...
These were yesterday's rockets, except for the Minuteman. Today's--the Saturn IB--we saw being assembled on the launching pad from which it will send off the first Apollo flights, the beginnings of the actual moon program. It was being assembled within a huge gantry. A mechanic, crawling around the first-stage motor, stopped to explain. The engine consisted of eight Redstone motors in a circle around a Jupiter hull that served as a fuel tank...
...began its yearly rebirth (astronomically they were only three days off). Peasants in northern Europe decorated their homes with evergreens as a tribute to nature's victory over the numbing winter, held lengthy feasts and processionals. The Romans celebrated' the entire winter solstice season to honor Saturn, the god of agriculture. During the Saturnalia everyone ate, drank and exchanged presents in one long bacchanal. When the Christian missionaries began to comb the countryside for converts, they found that few were willing to give up their pagan rites. Figuring that pragmatism was called for, they combined the two holidays...
Research has led, too, to the development of special transportation equipment to move rockets and other hard ware over long distances. To transport stages of the huge Saturn rocket, California's Aero Spacelines designed a whale-shaped turboprop plane called "the Super Guppy"; its 22½-ton capacity can accommodate huge computers, oil-well rigs and helicopters. Another major growth area is space-age sealants: G.E. is selling sealants, developed for the seams of spacecraft, for use in caulking bathroom tiles; General Motors is sealing windshields and rear windows with a product made by Thiokol from solid rocket fuel...
...fibers, and the $6,000 atomic absorption spectrophotometer, which almost instantly measures the amount of metal in a chemical sample. Lately, it has also branched into laser technology, produces the powerful gas lasers used in tracking missiles. For the U.S. space program, it makes the instruments that align the Saturn and Centaur guidance systems, the infra-red sensors that monitor carbon dioxide inside the Apollo spacecraft, and the cameras that photograph-and sometimes ride on-the rockets launched from Cape Kennedy. Its balloon-borne telescopes analyzed the atmosphere and climate of Mars long before Mariner spacecraft ever got near that...