Word: space
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Just when U.S. space achievements were beginning to make up for Sputnik jolts to the U.S.'s pride and prestige, the Russians sent their Lunik soaring far beyond where any man-made object had ever penetrated before. Once again the world marveled at the U.S.S.R.'s technological prowess. Pressing and immediate question: Why is the U.S. still lagging in a race that may decide whether freedom has any future...
...Russians' secret weapon," says a U.S. space expert, "is their early start." The U.S.S.R. began working on long-range ballistic missiles soon after World War II. The U.S. did not push ballistic-missile development until 1954, after U.S. physicists decided that they could do what they had said was impossible: make a nuclear warhead light enough to be carried in the nose of a missile...
...concentration on closing the military-missile gap, the Eisenhower Administration neglected the less pressing, less obvious challenge of space. While the Russians were working on big rockets capable of carrying hefty objects into outer space, U.S. missilemen were working on lighter, slimmer, more "sophisticated" missiles-marvels of engineering, but designed for earthly military tasks. Only in mid-1955, as part of the U.S.'s International Geophysical Year effort, did the U.S. at long last undertake its first serious satellite project, and even then the Eisenhower Administration, deciding to keep space research "peaceful" and separate from ballistic-missile programs, settled...
...Domains. Scurrying to make up for lost time after Sputnik I, the U.S. has put five satellites into orbit (Explorers I, III and IV, Vanguard, Atlas); fired two near-miss lunar probes (Pioneers I and III); started on an array of other satellite or space-probe projects; let development contracts with the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation Inc. for space-rocket engines with thrusts of 1,000,000 lbs. or more; pushed a man-in-space undertaking, Project Mercury, that is scheduled for announcement this month. But despite the flurry of projects, the U.S. has made disappointingly little progress...
Many of the Administration's scientific brains, from Presidential Adviser James R. Killian down, have proved to be naysayers and quibblers, among other things stirring up a futile, irrelevant dispute over whether space is a "civilian" or "military" realm. Reflecting this dispute, U.S. space programs are split between two bureaucratic domains: the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency and the civilian-bossed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (see chart). On paper the division is clear and logical: ARPA, headed by sometime General Electric Executive Roy Johnson, oversees military projects (the Discoverer eye-in-the-sky program...