Word: solar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...energy needed to escape from the earth's suction is simple for astronauts to figure. Expressed as speed, it is 25,000 m.p.h. A space ship with this "escape velocity" would be an independent part of the solar system and could cruise, with a little more energy, all over the place...
...have better planets. But a handicap to interstellar voyages is that they must conquer not only space but time. Even the nearest stars are light-years away, and each light-year is six trillion miles. If a space ship traveled at 50,000 m.p.h. (high speed in the solar system), it would take many thousands of years to reach a nearby star. Its crew would die of old age before the voyage had really gotten under...
...Academy of Medicine. According to a star census taken by Astronomer Gerald P. Kuiper of the University of Chicago, there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and one star in each thousand is believed to have planets circling around it. So there must be 100 million "solar systems" in the earth's galaxy alone...
Speed Limit. Part of the debate about meteors concerns their speed. If they are true members of the solar system, they must travel, like the planets and comets, on "closed orbits," again & again round the sun. In this case, says La Paz, their velocity can never be greater than 26.1 miles per second. If a body exceeds this limit (the "escape velocity" at the distance of the earth), it will leave the solar system and never come back...
This principle works just as well in reverse. If a body is moving faster than 26.1 miles per second, it cannot be a permanent member of the solar system. It must be a visitor from space, bound for space again on an "open," one-time orbit...