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Science Newsfront

Last-minute news and notes to keep you up-to-date

By ARTHUR FISHER

NASA fights auto pollution

The big guns of aerospace technology are being enlisted in the battle against the major source of air pollution in this country—automobile exhaust. The mission: to reduce the one-quarter to one-half ton of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons each car spews into the atmosphere in a year, as a result of incomplete fuel combustion. The battle plan: Develop a thermal reactor that would replace the standard exhaust manifold and serve as an afterburner. But such a reactor must withstand temperatures occasionally exceeding 2,000 degrees F, thermal shock from cold starts, and jarring vibrations—all problems routinely encountered in space exploration. Read the rest of this entry »

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Daring Men in Seven Nations Aim to Harness GIANT Rockets

FIFTEEN years ago the rocket was a toy, fit only for fireworks or laboratory demonstrations. Twelve years ago only one scientist in the world, the American physicist, Dr. Robert H. Goddard, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., was working to transform this ancient plaything into a source of power for fast vehicles. So rapid has progress been, since then, that today the rocket is a young giant, though as yet too impetuous and uncontrolled for commercial use.
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Chicago Man Stakes Claim to Outer Space

SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED PHOTOGRAPHS BY RUS ARNOLD

Early this year, 74 envelopes, each addressed to “The Honorable Secretary of State” of 74 different nations were dumped into a Chicago mailbox. Within the envelopes was the announcement that a new nation had been formed and was asking lor recognition. The intruder into world politics was a thing called Nation of Celestial Space, the brainchild and property of a Chicago publicity man and “industrial designer,” James T. Mangan.

The idea of a nation encompassing all of outer space smote Mangan late last year when he and Ernest Eckland, his partner, were idly talking about “stuff.” Eckland pointed out the window and remarked that there was “plenty of stuff out there.” Read the rest of this entry »

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MAN TO THE MOON

What will that first trip be like when—soon— brave men soar into the skies to conquer the moon?

Here is a preview of that great adventure By Tom Alexander Author of Project Apollo: Man to the Moon { Harper and Row, New York)

Illustrations by Ray Pioch THE FLIGHT A top their vast and audibly seething assembly, three men lie breathing quick in concentration as earth and rocket begin to cast off lines. In the last second a hundred switches clatter, fires are kindled, valves open, flames belch and cough smokily. Long, slow vibrations run upward through the rocket to jostle the crew, then begin smoothing away as the launch pad’s hold-down clamps fall. The Saturn poises, struggling against earth’s gravity and an atmosphere clinging like glue to its sides. It rises in a thunderous stroke to stage-one burnout at 150 seconds and 36 miles. …
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Coast-To-Coast in 40 Minutes

By G. Harry Stine

Three hundred miles up at two miles per second, then an 1,800-mile toboggan ride—that will he the new transcontinental rocket.

IN A RELATIVELY short time you may be able to have lunch in New York City, hop aboard an airliner, and have breakfast in Los Angeles the same day! The present seven-hour plane trip will take only 40 minutes.

Let’s slide forward a few years. The place is just outside New York City on a cold, blustery day. Inside the passenger terminal, luncheon is being served in the restaurant. It looks like an ordinary airline terminal except for the signs over the desks: Transcontinent Rocket Lines, Atlantic Rocket Service and others. We check in at The Transcontinent Rocket desk where our baggage is carefully weighed —along with ourselves. Weight has always been a prime factor in rocket work.
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200 INCH TELESCOPE Is Greatest Engine of Science

by WILLIAM JENNINGS

COOLING slowly in a brick igloo in Corning, N. Y., is a lake of 34 tons of molten glass, representing the greatest scientific project ever attempted by man. It took six years to reach this stage of the great task and it will be more than four more years before its success is known.

From far and wide scientists came to see the formation of this huge lake of glass— the pouring of the 200-inch telescope mirror that is expected to reach out into the unknown depths of the universe.

The work has hardly begun with the pouring of the mirror. Countless problems still face the scientists who have undertaken the task.
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What You would Find on Mars

By R.S. Richardson and Glenn C. Moore

Staff Members, Mt. Wilson Observatory

SEVERAL months ago thousands of people in the United States became panic stricken when they heard on the radio that men from Mars were invading the earth.

At that time Mars was 223,100,000 miles away, almost the greatest distance possible.

But since then the Red Planet has been drawing steadily nearer, until on July 27 it will be only 36,030,000 miles away, the closest approach for fifteen years past and for fifteen years to come. From a faint speck of light, Mars has grown until now it appears brighter than any star in the whole heavens—a glowing ball of fire low in the southern sky.

Gazing at our nearest neighbor in space” this summer, we cannot help wondering what kind of a world it is. What strange things would we find on it? How would we feel there?
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Space Cops to Enforce World Peace

Man-made satellite rocketships may soon revolve in endless orbits around the earth, policing our civilization.

By Frank Tinsley

NATIONS of the world are racing to send the first man-made satellite revolving in an endless orbit around the earth. In the hands of an agressor, such a machine might mean slavery for all mankind, but as a police unit of the United Nations, it holds a promise of world peace.

Back in the closing days of 1948, when Secretary of Defense James Forrestal disclosed the existence of an “earth satellite vehicle program,” the press and public reacted with a gasp of incredulous amazement. For the first time, responsible officials had dared to admit that they were seriously investigating the fantastic dreams of Sunday-supplement screwballs!
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If you like this article, you should also check these out:

• Must Tomorrow’s Man Look Like This?
• How Nuclear Radiation Can Change Our Race
• How Will You Talk to the Martians? (Dec, 1947)

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How Scientists Visualize the REAL Flying Saucer Men

When scholars of the universe recreate spacemen along logical scientific lines, even those supposed weird little saucerites seem ordinary by comparison.

By I. B. Neer

PRYING eyes of science are probing into space again in the hope of detecting life on other planets. Armed with new facts, previously accepted theories about what lies beyond the Earth are being discarded by scientists every day and the possibility grows more and more distinct that creatures, more fantastic than our most vivid imaginations could conjure up, may inhabit the planets around us. They make those startling stories of weird little men in flying saucers seem tame by comparison.
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No, this article is not about a particularly ambitious band of paparazzi.

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Photographing Stars with a Rocket

WILL science ever be able to take photographs of the spectra of the sun and other stars with cameras far outside the range of the earth’s atmosphere? Speculation on this possibility has been renewed by the recent experiments of Prof. Robert H. Goddard, of Worcester, Mass., in launching rockets of his own design powered with a secret liquid propellant which he invented.

Contrary to popular belief, Prof. Goddard has no intention of occupying one of his rockets on a fantastic journey to the moon. As pointed out by Dr. C. G. Abbott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, a close friend of Professor Goddard, the professor’s experiments are directed toward a scientific exploration of the upper heavens at distances now far beyond the reach of man.
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How can you not love the headline?

Sun Not So Bright
Compared to other stars in the same class, our sun is a weakling as far as brightness is concerned. According to recent tests at Harvard University, it gives off only seven tenths of the radiation it should for its size.

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Skyrocketing to Mars

Will Man Ever Reach the Red Planet?

Rocket machines operate more efficiently in the vacuum of interstellar space than in an atmosphere. Will science be able to harness this new force for interplanetary travel?

SCIENTISTS say that in the next few months we may see the first trials of man-carrying rockets, which will be shot off into space in an effort to land some intrepid adventurer on Venus or Mars! Visions of a Jules Verne voyage to another planet are actually nearing realization through the lessons learned from recent rocket tests made by Fritz von Opel and Anton Raab, two Germans who have made exhaustive studies of rockets as a means of propulsion.
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