Word: smithsonian
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Unable to confirm anything, the A.P. allowed early Tuesday that there were still "no hints as to the mystery traveler's identity"-but volunteered no hints as to the identity of its mysterious news informants. Turning to such tried-and-true sources as Estes Kefauver and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Fred Whipple (who, said A.P., "expressed no surprise"), the A.P.-in common with big-city newspapers-kept the astronaut aloft with scientific and political punditry...
...John S. Rinehart, associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said the rocket Russians reportedly used to put a man aloft did not have to be nearly as large as that required to launch a satellite...
While Sputniks I and II still orbit overhead, scientists around the world are racing through mountains of data to discover how information on the movements of the Russians' artificial moons has altered standard theories of the earth and its atmosphere. Last week scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge suggested a drastic revision of an accepted notion of the earth's upper atmosphere: at about 137 miles altitude, the atmosphere may be almost nine times as dense as scientists once believed...
...Smithsonian scientists calculated the density of the upper atmosphere by studying the gradually shrinking orbit of Sputnik I. Under the old theory, Sputnik I should stay up for about 27 months before aerodynamic drag and gravity pull it down into air dense enough to destroy it by the heat of friction. But now the Smithsonian scientists think that the moon will set for good after only 3½ months, flare into destruction sometime around the middle of January...
Even under the new theory, the earth's upper atmosphere is still nearly a vacuum. Rocketeers and missilemen, whose vehicles travel through this area at tremendous speeds, probably will have to make only minor adjustments in their plans. But if the Smithsonian's finding checks out, the perigee (minimum orbital altitude) for a long-lived satellite will have to be raised from 140 miles to 180 miles because of the decelerating drag of air particles at the lower altitude. Anticipated perigee for Vanguard: a safe 200 miles. Scientists at Washington's Carnegie Institution are still puzzling over...