Word: vaporous
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Glenn speculated that the particles might be the cloud of needles the Air Force had tried to orbit last October* or that they might be snowflakes formed by the cooling of water vapor from his jet nozzles. But Glenn quickly rejected both theories. Best explanation of the phenomenon: the capsule was giving off electrically charged particles of water or gas vapor that were attracted to each other, built up the specks that Glenn saw. When Glenn later described the particles to George Rapp, a Project Mercury psychiatrist, he got the deadpan response: "What did they say. John...
...calm and self-assurance-and for jood reason. When attacked by a ferocious ant, its natural enemy, the bombardier beetle (Brachinus) merely stands its ground, pushes a flexible tube from its rear end and points it at the enemy. With a small but audible bang, a cloud of acrid vapor envelops the ant, reducing it to paralysis or trembling confusion. Until recently, the bombardier beetle's efficient defensive weapon was pretty much of a mystery. Entomologists thought that it simply squirted out a liquid that exploded on hitting the air. But in West Germany's Angewandte Chemie...
...informal talk on the atmosphere and surface of Venus given at the Harvard Observatory, Sagan noted that four theories of the nature of the planet had been held within the last 50 years. The earliest concluded that Venus was a planet shrouded with clouds of water vapor, hiding a surface that was nothing but swampy rain forest...
Modern information, said Sagan, indicates that the surface is not covered with water and that the cloud layer which obscures the surface is most likely frozen water vapor at a height of about 22 miles above the surface. The surface temperature seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 622 degrees Fahrenheit...
...Atlas was beefed up for its job, and it performed perfectly; the MA4 accelerated surely into its planned orbit. Strapped in the capsule instead of a man sat an oblong box that performed most of an astronaut's functions: it consumed oxygen, excreted carbon dioxide and water vapor, and it also talked-feeding the recorded voice of NASA Communications Engineer Howard Kyle into a microphone to test the Mercury communication system. Out of a porthole and periscope peered two cameras. Special instruments recorded the assorted stimuli that would have assaulted a human astro naut: vicious vibration and gut-wrenching...