Word: sullivanism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ideas for gizmos to put in satellites are as common as scientists' notebooks, and they range from TV cameras to dogs and chimpanzees. William J. O'Sullivan Jr. of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics favors satellites that can do useful jobs with no instruments...
...satellite, is so light that it can be carried almost as an afterthought by any orbit-bound rocket. It is a balloon of plastic film .00025 in. thick, bonded to aluminum foil .0005 in. thick and packed in a doughnut-shaped container. To inflate the balloon, O'Sullivan provides a capsule of nitrogen gas at 2,000 Ibs. pressure per square inch. The whole apparatus weighs only...
...left the capsule, the balloon is erected into a sphere 30 in. in diameter. The pressure inside it (.2 lb.) is enough to stretch the wrinkles out of the aluminum film and make it mirror smooth. After doing this job, the nitrogen escapes into the vacuum outside. O'Sullivan wants to get rid of it because the balloon may be punctured by a meteor, and a jet of gas escaping from it might push it off its regular orbit...
...Sullivan's modest sphere would not be conspicuous to the naked eye, but it could be picked up easily with low-power moonwatch telescopes. Its great virtue would be its short life. Even on a comparatively high orbit, the tenuous bubble of nothing would be slowed by faint traces of air on the threshold of space. Following a circular course 300 miles above the earth, it would live for only about ten days, and its rapid changes of speed and altitude would measure air density much more accurately than the slow responses of heavier satellites...
...neither a writer of fan letters nor particularly interested in the sport of improving the breed of horses. However, I am compelled to extend my congratulations to TIME for its outstanding article [March 17] on Silky Sullivan...