Word: space
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Actual production was in the hands of husky young (31) George Ludwig, a graduate student who has proved himself a mechanical genius in the painstaking new art of space instrumentation. Each ounce counts, because it costs many thousands of dollars to put each ounce into orbit. The tiny, buglike components must stand enormous g forces, vibration and spin, survive violent changes of temperature...
Ludwig sets up a rough, breadboard model of the circuitry with real transistors, resistors and other components. When the circuits check out, the components are mounted on plastic disks. A typical package may contain several hundred diodes, transistors and resistors. All open space among the spidery components is usually filled with foamed plastic. Then the whole apparatus is dropped, shaken, bounced, heated and cooled...
...launched a satellite came over the ship's radio. Van Allen went to work on the Glacier's 20-mc. receiver, and within half an hour it yielded vigorous beeping sounds. That was Sputnik I. The Russians had won the first heat in the race into space...
...Allen instantly cabled his approval, wired Ludwig to pack up all his apparatus and rush it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena. Then he flew back from New Zealand. In Pasadena, he and Pickering decided that the payload-basically a Geiger counter to detect cosmic rays in space and two incredibly light but powerful radio transmitters-would have to be modified in one respect. It contained a miniature tape recorder to record the cosmic-ray data during a trip around the earth and then transmit it quickly when triggered by a coded signal sent up from the ground. Designed...
...amazing conclusion: the earth was surrounded by a belt of intense radiation, apparently trapped by earth's magnetic field. It might be deadly enough to interfere seriously with man's attempts to fly out into space...