Word: working
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...late 1940s, J.P.L. set a team to work looking for a solid fuel that would be used in long-range rockets. Requirements were that the fuel burn evenly, resist cracking under pressure, and be capable of insulating the thin shell of the rocket from the heat of its own combustion. They hit upon a polysulfide-a rubbery, sticky liquid that could be poured, solidified, then burned at a controllable rate. It worked, and is now the basis for the Navy's Polaris and all other solid-fuel U.S. rockets. The small company that made it, Thiokol, has become...
Last year J.P.L. was taken over from the Army by the newly created NASA. J.P.L. still does specific military work, but its main job is basic and applied research to further the U.S. push into space. One laboratory investigates the behavior of fuels, plastics and other materials at temperatures simulating space's icy cold. Long-range planners devise methods to map the far side of the moon. Biggest single project is Vega, the U.S.'s most advanced space vehicle. Expected to fly in about 18 months, the first Vega will use an Atlas D as its first stage...
...talk lightly about bases on the moon or armed satellites keeping watch on the earth. J.P.L.'s emphasis is on reliability, but sometimes one of its shots misbehaves. Then it issues no cheer ful announcement explaining how the failure was really a useful success. "It didn't work," say J.P.L. men, candidly. "We are upset about...
...must on the agenda was a side trip to a cluster of laboratories in Taipei. The labs are the headquarters of a far-ranging, little-publicized U.S. Navy unit known as Namru-2 (for Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2). What the delegates saw of Namru-2's work was so impressive that they later passed a resolution to accept the unit's standing offer of emergency help in epidemics among Asia's civilian population. As most of the delegates well knew, Namru-2 has long since proved its value to Asia's millions...
With a roster of 23 Americans (including four M.D.s. four science Ph.D.s) and 155 Chinese (including three Formosan M.D.s, one Ph.D.), Namru-2 is also at work on a variety of other projects...