Word: silicones
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Vanguard I might seem too small (diameter: 6.4 in.; weight: 3.25 Ibs.) to carry much cargo, but an amazing amount of delicate apparatus was packed into it. Most novel items: its six solar batteries made of subtly treated silicon that look out through windows distributed over the sphere in such a way that at least one of them is always facing the sun. Each battery develops about 25 milliwatts of power when in sunlight, and feeds a miniature transmitter that broadcasts continuously on 108.03 megacycles. Another transmitter, powered by a mercury battery, broadcasts on 108 megacycles...
Brooks, a Gordon McKay Professor here since 1950, has done research in the cohesive energy of alkalis, metal interfaces, lattice imperfections in metals, and the theory of electrical properties of germanium and silicon...
...since aluminum will not stick to gold, the gold had to be covered with a thin film of chromium. Aluminum will stick to chromium, but it also mixes with it and loses part of its reflecting power. So the chromium film in turn had to be coated with glassy silicon monoxide, and then with aluminum...
...coatings was done by the Army Engineers at Fort Belvoir, Va. Each satellite was put in a vacuum chamber and turned, like a chicken on a spit while the materials in the coatings were evaporated electrically and deposited on its surface. The final coat was a second layer of silicon monoxide...
...Freeze. The two outer layers determine the satellite's reaction to solar radiation. Silicon monoxide is transparent to visible light, so the powerful visible part of the sun's radiation penetrates to the shiny aluminum and is mostly reflected back into space. The temperature of the aluminum rises slowly, both because it is a poor absorber and because the silicon monoxide layer in contact with it is a comparatively good radiator of infra-red (heat) rays. By experimenting with different thicknesses of silicon monoxide, the Navy's scientists think they can keep the temperature of the skin...