Word: saturns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
Liquid hydrogen is the fuel for two important U.S. rocket engines-Pratt & Whitney's RL-10 and Rocketdyne's J2. The RL-10 powers the second stage of Saturn 1, scheduled for early Apollo flights; two RL-10s combine to form the Centaur stage of the Atlas-Centaur system built to soft-land Surveyor spacecraft on the moon. J-2 forms the second and third stages of the Saturn V designed for Apollo's man-carrying lunar missions. In the near future, violent but versatile liquid hydrogen may become still more familiar as a fuel for supersonic...
...Orbital Laboratory. Future solid boosters, claims United Technology Center, developer of the booster stage, could produce lift-off thrusts of 18 million Ibs. Proponents of solids are even hoping that the Titan IIIC success will get NASA to change its mind and incorporate strap-on solid boosters in its Saturn V, the rocket that is being designed to propel man to the moon...