Word: thors
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...gobs of a three-scoop ice cream cone were a polished aluminum sphere, the Naval Research Laboratory's Greb III solar radiation satellite, and a smaller drum named Injun, built at Dr. James Van Allen's laboratory at the State University of Iowa. Boosted aloft by a Thor-Able-Star rocket, all three satellites soared into space together. Though the launch was successful, the strong springs, meant to shove the satellites apart to follow separate orbits around the earth, did an incomplete job. Transit went its lonely way, but Greb and Injun stuck together...
...theory expounded by Thor Heyerdahl in his bestselling Kon-Tiki that the cultural traffic went t'other way, from Peru to the South Pacific, is dismissed by most experts...
Narrow Margin. Last week Mitchell got another chance. Discoverer XIV had been fired atop a Thor-Agena rocket from Vandenberg, Calif., and once again Mitchell's squadron was alerted. Mitchell slapped a cap on his red-thatched head, kissed his wife and promised: "I'll get it this time, honey." This time he did. But the margin of success was narrow indeed...
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...