Word: saturns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...moon, photographed Mars and crashed onto Venus, the more distant planets of the solar system are still beyond the practical grasp of man. None of the rockets now used in either the U.S. or Russian space programs are powerful enough to reach them. Even the huge and yet-unproven Saturn 5, which will carry men to the moon, would require an additional stage to send only a tiny payload on one-way trips, and would require six years to reach Saturn, 16 years to Uranus and 30.7 years to Neptune. But the planetary timetable may soon be revised. An ingenious...
Proved by Mars. Under Stewart's direction, scientists at JPL's Advanced Studies Office have calculated that a Saturn 5-powered craft launched on Oct. 1, 1978, would gain so much speed as it passed Jupiter that it could reach Saturn in only 2.8 years and Uranus in 5.9 years. A flight launched into a proper trajectory on Nov. 1, 1979, would be picked up by Jupiter's gravity and hurled to Neptune - like a skater at the end of a crack-the-whip line - in only 8.1 years. The scientists also discovered that the outer planets...
...even farther away. Both times there were only disappointingly modest increases in the Leonid showers-partly because of the meteoroids' 33¼-year orbital period and partly because the main swarm had probably been pulled into a slightly different orbit as it passed close by Jupiter and Saturn...
Unfortunately, astronomers the world over, trembling with anticipation, observed nothing unusual at the last two predicted returns. They concluded that the swarm had been de- flected slightly by the gravitational pulls of Jupiter and Saturn. No one knows if the orbit has now been shifted back. The only indication that it might have is that the regular yearly meteor shower has been steadily increasing for the last three years...
Equipped with everything that it will carry to the moon except the astronauts and their sleeping couches, the Apollo system, weighing 56,900 lbs., or more than seven times the Gemini spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Kennedy riding the nose of a 22-story-high Saturn 1 rocket. After separating from the Saturn booster, Apollo fired its own rocket engine and soared to a peak altitude of 706 miles over South Africa. Then, as the space ship began to descend, its engine was fired three more times in successful tests of its capabilities...