Word: solarized
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reaching violence. Stormy weather on the sun sometimes tosses out clouds of deadly particles, mostly protons, that can kill in a few minutes any humans riding in thin-walled spacecraft. So among the scientists who studied the corona were members of a new, specialized profession: solar meteorology. Their job is to learn to forecast solar weather and try to pick times when astronauts can venture safely beyond the shelter of the earth's atmosphere...
...Bright Patches. Man's first steps into space were taken during a period of comparative solar calm, but this will not last much longer. Long before 1970, when the first U.S. expeditions may be ready to start for the moon, the sun's surface will be spitting dangerous particles, following its eleven-year storm cycle. The worst of them will come from "flares," which appear suddenly as hot bright patches on the sun's surface...
While physicists are debating the cause of the flares, practical solar meteorologists are learning to identify solar weather conditions that may produce them. First, says Dr. James Van Allen, discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belt, a sunspot must be visible. A group of several sunspots is even more likely to produce a flare, but not all do. Often they fade away without a blowoff...
...early enough to abort a space shot, or to tell an exposed man on the moon to dive for cover, but it is not much use for scheduling long missions. The prudent Dr. Dodson-Prince wishes that the U.S. moon push could be postponed until the next period of solar quiet, which will start around...
...Real Hooper. Dr. Van Allen is more hopeful. He thinks that careful design of spacecraft, putting fuel, food, batteries and other heavy objects toward the outside as protective shields, will do much to shield astronauts against solar protons without adding much weight. In any case, he says, the peril from flares is not too great. During a 450-day period from October 1959 to February 1961, when he measured protons in space, 21 flares affected the earth. Most of them were not dangerous. But toward the end of November 1960 came three violent solar "events," one of which reached peak...