Word: targets
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hitting the moon at all with a man-made missile is a prodigy of calculation and performance, and Ranger's builders have learned to turn the trick only after profiting from the experience of heartbreaking failures. Their first five shots fizzled. The sixth was on target, but its TV cameras failed to function. Ranger VII did everything right; its radioed photographs may have told little to amateurs, but they made professionals more familiar than ever with the planet they plan to visit. Then came Ranger VIII, and man got his clearest look yet at his closest planetary neighbor...
...precision Ranger shot is to put the spacecraft on a parking orbit around the earth. That orbit is then analyzed by computers; the spacecraft's altitude, speed and direction must be measured with infinite care, for the next burst of power must boost the spacecraft through an imaginary target 120 miles above the earth and only ten miles in diameter. Only then can a mid-course correction of trajectory put the spacecraft inside the selected area...
Ranger VIII hit the ten-mile target at the correct speed, set itself at the proper angle to the sun and the earth, and kept in tight communication with its ground-control stations. About 17 hours after launch, the command came from its masters at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to prepare for the critical mid-course maneuver. Dutifully Ranger writhed in space, turning its gleaming golden body as it was told. It fired its small rocket engine for 59 seconds, and when it had writhed back again to cruising attitude, JPL scientists predicted that it would hit inside...
...Tranquillity was the target picked before the launch. Ranger VII had photographed a fairly smooth-looking place now called the Mare Cognitum (Known Sea) and found it to be pocked with small pits apparently made by chunks of rock tossed out of the crater Copernicus. A lunar landing vehicle might have serious trouble with such pits, and the hope was that the Sea of Tranquillity would prove to be smoother...
...must also negotiate with emerging nations seeking control of oil resources and producing nations demanding hither royalties. Jersey's size also makes it a prime antitrust target. Last week Rathbone himself appeared in court to defend the purchase of the Potash Co. of America for its fertilizer facilities, and Humble announced that, since it has been barred by the Justice Department from acquiring Tidewater Oil's $329 million West Coast marketing network, it will build its own California refinery...