Word: shots
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hope that its instruments could measure and even get a dim picture of the mysteries that have nagged men's minds for centuries. But its trajectory was off; Pioneer missed the moon and headed back to a fiery death in the earth's atmosphere. Still, the unprecedented shot was a historic success, especially because Pioneer's instruments flashed reams of new knowledge of outer space. Britain's top scientists called it "an amazing feat," "a most tremendous achievement." Paris' Roman Catholic daily, La Croix, echoed: "The most prodigious event in history." India's Nehru...
...into the black space shot Pioneer, trailing its dazzling fire, burning first one stage, then the next, then the next, shucking off, in turn, its carefully designed earth clothes. In three minutes it was gone from sight, truly free, reaching up to where no man-made thing had ever touched. And a few moments later, as if responding to the challenge, the waning moon rose out of the Atlantic to the east of the Cape...
...first word came of the shot's success, Project Pioneer's scientists, technicians and observers threw off the guarded reserve that they had built up over months of missile woes, were all but hysterical with joy. When Cape Canaveral's pencil-mustached Major General Donald Yates walked into a press conference, newsmen rose and applauded. In Hawthorne, Calif., at the Data Reduction Center of Ramo-Wooldridge's Space Technology Laboratories (the Air Force's top moon-probe contractor), Air Force officers and civilians whooped and pounded one another. In the Pentagon, top brass cheerfully poured...
...Manchester, England picked up Pioneer within a dozen minutes, sent tracking information clacking back into the electronic data-reducing headquarters in the Space Technology Lab. But moments later, at the third stage rocket burnout, with Pioneer at maximum velocity, Canaveral scientists quickly computed speed and altitude. Had Pioneer shot up at too vertical an angle and thus been robbed of some of its getaway speed? The computations said yes. The scientists instantly decided to fire all eight vernier rockets in the fourth stage (although these had been held in reserve to deliver only incremental power) in the hope that...
...armed with an air rifle loaded with a nicotine-tipped needle, climbed to the rooftop near the spot where Maverick liked to laze. Soon Maverick appeared and stretched out in the shade. For two hours the man with the gun maneuvered to get a bead. Then he shot...