Word: saturns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...week was seared with rockets. The U.S. communications satellite, Echo II, expanded its aluminum skin and made ready to reflect messages from space. Saturn 5, boosting the biggest payload man has ever lofted into orbit, shot into the vast blue reaches above Cape Kennedy. Soon after, Ranger 6 arced on a graceful, curving course toward the moon. From a secret launching pad, half the world away, Soviet scientists fired a missile that spewed out two separate satellites. The variety of the shots was as impressive as the number, and the infinite distances of the universe seemed to shrink perceptibly...
...embarrassments of delay. One tiny plug carelessly left in an oxygen line had delayed the launch for 48 hours. Poised on the pad, the big bird had to wait impatiently while Air Force planes tracked down the noisy radio of a ship slogging along offshore. But now Saturn SA-5, biggest and most powerful rocket ever fired aloft, was rising above Cape Kennedy as routinely as any operational missile...
Trailing a muffled bellow from its eight engines, Saturn seemed to rise with unnatural slowness. During the first ten seconds it climbed less than twice its own length, then it quickly gathered speed and rumbled behind a low-flying cloud. At 48 miles' altitude, the massive first-stage booster shut off and separated. The hydrogen-burning second stage took over, and it burned perfectly for eight minutes. When it was 1,300 miles downrange and 375 miles north of Antigua Island, the triumphant announcement came: Saturn had reached orbiting speed. The new satellite weighs...
Crewless Liner. The success of the Saturn SA-5, which puts the U.S. far ahead of the Russians, is more than mere astronautical muscle-flexing. It was achieved by almost incredible complexity and sophistication. The first-stage booster, built by Chrysler, gets its 1,500,000 Ibs, of thrust from eight H-l engines originally developed by North American for the Atlas and other mis siles. Their tangle of auxiliary plumbing is like a jam session of snakes, and it gives most engineers the shudders...
...their kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel through flexible tubing, from nine tanks interconnected so that if one engine fails, the others will use its share of fuel and burn longer. Backing up the engines is an incredible array of pumps, valves, gas generators, high-pressure tanks and cables. Saturn SA-5 is as complicated as a crewless ocean liner operated by flash-quick automatons...