Word: vernier
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Total Record. The novel deals with a Paris high school teacher, Pierre Vernier, who keeps a minute-by-minute log of all that happens in his eleventh-grade geography class in which his nephew Pierre Eller is a student. Vernier is obsessed by the need to record the total experience: This drives him to include, first, accounts of other students and teachers, then of their families and friends, then of their past and future lives. Next, the compulsive Vernier must procure the manuals and textbooks for all the courses these students are taking, to bone up on them...
...programed course. As it rose, the Atlas reported by radio on how it was doing. Digesting this information almost instantly, the ground computer radioed back to the Atlas the proper corrections for making its actual course conform to the programed one. These course corrections were made by controllable vernier rockets and slight changes of the direction in the thrust of the main engine. When the Atlas had climbed above nearly all of the atmosphere, the computer told it to turn its nose parallel to the earth's surface. Other U.S. satellites were kicked into orbit by firing a final...
...third stage rocket burnout, with Pioneer at maximum velocity, Canaveral scientists quickly computed speed and altitude. Had Pioneer shot up at too vertical an angle and thus been robbed of some of its getaway speed? The computations said yes. The scientists instantly decided to fire all eight vernier rockets in the fourth stage (although these had been held in reserve to deliver only incremental power) in the hope that the speed would increase enough to keep Pioneer aimed at its target. But the added thrust only increased the speed by 160 ft. per second-not enough...
Spin-Stabilization. All other hardware seems to have functioned perfectly. The second stage, a considerably modified second stage of the ill-starred Vanguard, pushed the vehicle to 188 miles above the earth while small vernier rockets, set askew, made it spin on its axis at no r.p.m. The function of this spin-stabilization, like the spin of a rifle bullet, was to keep the vehicle from tumbling on its journey through space...
...pressure inside the rocket falls abruptly. The fuel stops burning, and the thrust drops to zero. If this kind of cutoff is not accurate enough, small vernier rockets can be used to give the proper amount of extra push. Or retrorockets thrusting in reverse can shave a few feet per second off the rocket's speed...