Word: tularosa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tangent or Great Circle? To build a track straight and level enough for missiles was a technical tour de force. Air Force experts selected a section of the Tularosa Basin, near Holloman, that is almost as flat as a frozen lake. While figuring theoretically how to lay out the 35,080-ft. track, they considered making it perfectly straight both up-and-down and sideways, but gave this up because the curvature of the earth (the earth considered as a sphere with a 4,000-mile radius) would require either a cut in the ground 35 ft. deep...
...fasteners for the rails, which are 7 ft. apart and three times as heavy as railroad rails. They came in 3Q-ft. sections and were welded together on the spot into 10,000-ft. lengths. Merely fastening them to the concrete slab would not do; the temperature of the Tularosa Basin fluctuates between zero and 120°F. If the rails were fastened in cool weather, a hot summer day might make them expand and buckle out of line. So each 10,000-ft. length of massive rail was stretched 3 ft. by hydraulic jacks. At ordinary temperatures the rails...
...owners in southern New Mexico's clear and dry Tularosa Basin, Max Rothman's converted chicken coop with the homemade broadcast tower was the best radio station on the air. Because Max, a chubby, balding man of 40, worked at nearby Holloman Air Force Base (like all 50 FM owners), his wife Sima handled the daytime broadcasts, wrote copy, answered the phone and managed to look after four children between platters and chatter. As feeding time grew near, the squalls of her baby son often punctuated her spot announcements, but nobody seemed to mind. After work (designing instruments...
...mechanical voice of the loudspeaker cracked across the clear, dry air of New Mexico's Tularosa Valley: "Ten, nine, eight...
...desert Tularosa Basin in southern New Mexico is a valley without a river. Fierce winds sweep across it, and dust devils whirl in the sun. On most days the valley is quiet, with only a scattered coming & going of military vehicles from White Sands Proving Ground (Army Ordnance) or Holloman Air Force Base. But sometimes a screaming roar echoes among the mountains, and a monstrous bird with a tail of flame flies straight into the sky. Or a slender, dartlike object slips out of the belly of a B-29 and streaks over the horizon at several times the speed...