Word: thor
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...balloon as high as a ten-story building, with an aluminum coat that refleets radiomagnetic waves of frequencies up to 20.000 megacycles. Its skin is only .0005 in. thick-about half as thick as the cellophane on a pack of cigarettes. Packed accordion-fashion into the nose of a Thor-Delta rocket fired from Cape Canaveral, the 136-lb. satellite was filled with sublimating powders that expanded into gas in the direct rays of the sun and caused the balloon to inflate itself in orbit...
Twelve times a Discoverer satellite had been fired, atop a two-stage Thor-Agena rocket, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; twelve times it had failed to accomplish its total mission. To prepare the way for that day when a man can be shot into space and brought back alive. Discoverer's task was to control a satellite at will in its orbit and guide it back for recovery, undamaged, at a specific point on the earth's surface...
Discoverer's margin of failure was irritatingly small. Not once had the Thor booster failed to carry its instrument-packed burden off the launching pad. Only on one occasion, when Discoverer IX was purposely destroyed 56 sec. after launching, did the second stage fail to separate and ignite. Six times the satellite was successfully guided into orbit and its instrument capsule, at an electronic command, dropped back toward earth. But none of the capsules was recovered. The other achievements seemed secondary. Public fancy fastened on perhaps the Discoverer program's least important aspect: the attempt to snare...
...effective in the age of ballistic missiles and nuclear destruction, the Thors must be capable of nearly instant action. But to avoid a calamitous mis take, there must be every possible safeguard. The actual procedure for ordering the launching of a Thor missile has both speed and precautions...
...From the President, the order would be flashed to SAC headquarters in Omaha, which would relay it to the U.S. officer in Britain in command of U.S. warheads. From the Prime Minister, a parallel order would go to Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Cross, commander of the Thor squadrons. Air Marshal Cross would transmit the order to each Thor station. The R.A.F. officer, inserting his key in the lower slot, would start the fully automatic 15-minute countdown to nuclear...