Word: venuses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Mars, whose orbit is outside the earth's, the spaceship must climb up the side of the sun's gravitational pit-by speeding up. To reach Venus it must climb down-by slowing down...
...voyage to Venus, which revolves nearer the sun, the space navigator starts his ship in the direction opposite to the earth's orbital motion. Its net departure speed above escape velocity is subtracted from the orbital speed. This makes it move too slowly to stay on the earth's orbit, so the sun's gravitation curves it inward to Venus...
Perhaps the most striking thing about space navigation is the ease of longdistance travel after successful launching. Mars never comes closer to the earth than 34.5 million miles, Venus never closer than 25 million miles. To cover these great distances, it takes more time (146 days to Venus, 260 days to Mars), but only slightly more speed than is needed to go to the moon, which is only 230,000 miles away. This is because space between the planets is comparatively smooth. It is only slightly affected by planetary gravitation, and the great pull of the sun is countered...
...Planets. Nearest planet to the earth is Venus. It is about as big as the earth and has an atmosphere, but it seems even less attractive as real estate than the airless, sun-seared moon. Its atmosphere is so cloudy that outsiders, peering from the earth, can see only its slightly yellowish cloud deck, which sometimes shows faint, impermanent markings...
...Venusian atmosphere contains carbon dioxide. This information does not mean (as many science-fiction writers seem to think) that Venus under its clouds is covered with lush jungles. Earthside plants need carbon dioxide, but their flourishing presence on earth is the reason why the earth's modern atmosphere contains only a trace of CO2. This abundance of carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere is excellent proof that the planet has no earthlike plants...