Word: space
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Julian Jaynes was six years old and staring at a yellow forsythia bush when the problem first entered his mind: "I thought, 'How do I know that other people see the same yellow I see?' I had the idea that there was a space in everyone else's head that I couldn't get to. How did that space get there...
Long before the invention of the rocket, man dreamed of hoisting sail and traveling through space in wind-blown ships. In The True History, a tale written in the 2nd century A.D. by the satirist and onetime lawyer, Lucian of Samosata, a ship with a 50-man crew is caught in an Atlantic storm, carried aloft and sent, sail billowing, on a journey to the moon. Later storytellers launched ships with sails on even more fanciful space trips. But none of these fictional voyages was as remarkable as the mission now being planned for NASA by scientists at Pasadena...
...Inexhaustible. The fantastic voyage was proposed by a group commissioned by J.P.L. Director Bruce Murray to consider imaginative concepts for interplanetary exploration. A mission to Halley's comet, which returns every 74 to 79 years, has long been one of NASA's goals. But using conventional space-flight techniques to rendezvous and keep up with the glowing visitor-which reaches speeds of 198,000 kilometers (124,000 miles) an hour as it approaches the sun-would require enormous amounts of fuel and an impractically large and expensive rocket...
Still, the huge sailer poses a problem. The sail must be carried aloft furled (folded, it will fit into a package of only one cubic meter) and the framework assembled far beyond the atmosphere. Luckily, NASA is readying a suitable ferry: the space shuttle. Capable of carrying the sail and framework in its large equipment bay, the shuttle should be in regular use by the proposed launch date for the sailing ship: January...
...March 1986. Jettisoning the sail, and "flying station" just two kilometers above the comet's head, the ship will take TV pictures and readings to determine the visitor's composition and origin. Says J.P.L.'s Murray: "We don't have a clue about comets. The space sailer could help provide some...