Word: snap
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vermont, Ma Calloway (Vera Miles) yearns for "a house with real snap-on lights." Pa (Brian Keith) and Son Bucky (Brandon deWilde) seem content with a cabin in the pines, where their pet bear can hibernate under the floor boards. The menfolk only want to raise $1,100 to buy a private lake where the geese can set down en route north or south, as the case may be. But a halfway house for geese is not a simple matter, not by a long shot...
...nuclear reactor capable of providing abundant power without paying too much of a penalty for weight, and an ion engine capable of turning that power into thrust for months or years without paying too high a price in fuel consumption. Last week the first of such combinations, featuring SNAP-10A,* the world's first spaceworthy reactor, went into operation as it orbited the earth...
Bomb Fuel. The very conception of a nuclear reactor that can work by itself in space required new and imaginative technology. And scientists at California's Atomics International, who built SNAP-10A for the Atomic Energy Commission, produced a machine like nothing now working on earth. Its fuel is 4.75 kilograms (10.5 lbs.) of uranium 235, the nuclear explosive used in the first atomic bomb. Packed into 37 tubes of heat-resistant nickel alloy, the fuel is mixed with zirconium hydride, which acts as a moderator, slowing down the high-energy neutrons released by fissioning atoms...
When the rocket cleared the atmosphere, the windscreen was jettisoned; the reactor and its conical support section went into orbit 800 miles above the earth. As soon as SNAP's scientists were convinced that the proper orbit had been attained, they sent a signal that told the reflector mechanism to reduce neutron leakage. Slowly the nuclear reaction started; heat built up in the core, and a magnetic pump circulated the metallic coolant at 1020°F. through tubes in the skin of the support structure. The inner ends of 2880 pellets of a germanium-silicon material were heated while...
...Snapping Column. General Motors is experimenting with wired seat belts that must be buckled before the ignition system will work, and with green taillights that turn red when the brakes are applied and thus give a sharper light contrast on braking than at present. The Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, which does work for all of the auto companies, has suggested removing the glove compartment to do away with a potentially dangerous obstacle to the front-seat passenger in case of a crash, and protecting the driver with a steering column that would snap in the middle upon impact. Others have proposed...