Word: speeding
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...carrier seemed to be feeling the strain. The carrier is probably a large, empty cylinder with a lot of air resistance for its weight, so the thin air at orbit level takes more energy from it. But as the carrier loses energy to the air, it does not lose speed. It spirals down to a lower orbit and speeds up. The nearer an orbiting body is to the earth, the faster it must move. The earth's natural moon, for instance, moves on its distant orbit (240,000 miles from the earth) at only 2,355.2 m.p.h., which...
...Joseph A. Hynek of the Smithsonian Observatory estimated that after the first week the carrier had descended about ten miles from the apogee of its original orbit and increased its speed by about 20 m.p.h. This put it far ahead of the satellite proper, and made it spiral lower. There it could be getting hot from air friction, but it would probably last for at least two more weeks. Until Sputnik itself shows signs of dropping or speeding up, its date of fiery death cannot be predicted. Dr. John P. Hagen, chief of the U.S. satellite program, thinks that Sputnik...
...Russians charged that the United States urged Turkey to launch an attack with "lightning speed," in order to confront the U.N. with a situation whereby the world organization "may have no time to take steps to prevent aggression...
...orbit for the sputnik, the Russians were daring. The easiest way to put a satellite on an orbit is to launch it toward the east from the equator. This takes maximum advantage of the earth's easterly rotation, and gives the satellite about 1,000 m.p.h. of free speed. The U.S. satellite, launched due east from Florida, would have got about 914 m.p.h. of free speed. The sputnik's orbit, 65° away from the equator, takes it -in Red triumph-over nearly all of the inhabited earth. (The U.S. satellite would have stayed south of most...
...Russians have not told much except the sputnik's weight and speed (about 18,000 m.p.h.). It circles the earth, they say, every 96.2 minutes. The plane of the orbit stands fixed in space while the earth rotates inside it, so successive trips carry the sputnik over different territory. General Anatoly Arkadievich Blagonravov, head of a three-man Russian delegation to last week's satellite convention in Washington, says that it has four radio antennae and that the power of the radio signal is one watt (enough for a U.S. radio ham to talk with Australia). He estimates...