This is a contemporary account of the discovery of Pluto. At the time it had not yet been named. The article lists Atlas, Prometheus, and Pluto as suggested possibilities.
How They Trailed a New Planet
Study of many photos of stars disclosed to a farm boy what may prove a new world where a famous astronomer said it would be. Old theories are upset by find.
By
ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC
A NEW planet has been announced. Out in space, four billion miles beyond the globe we live on, a yellowish object, a little larger than the earth, swings in a vast circle about the sun; a frigid little world, bathed in the dim light of perpetual dusk. Its discovery is called the most important event in astronomy in nearly a hundred years.
A new planet is not found every day. As many of us learned in school, a planet is one of the exclusive company of heavenly bodies that get their light and heat from the sun. They swing about it, as the earth does, in great circular paths, or orbits. These earthlike worlds are so few in number that they may be counted on the fingers.
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10000 Miles an Hour!
Rocket flights of tomorrow will circle the earth in 3 hours—maybe.
WALK past almost any flowered field or meadow from Connecticut to California these fine summer afternoons and as likely as not you’ll see little knots of agitated men puttering with strange-looking contraptions which hiss and let off gaseous odors. Edge over to satisfy your curiosity and some of them will come running up warningly to shoo you away.
There’s a good reason for the presence of so many mysterious looking men. Rocketry is making tremendous strides in its development as an embryonic science. Over the past winter there have been many important developments in cellar and garret workshops everywhere. Under the clear skies of July and August tests are being made to ascertain their practical value.
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How Will You Talk to the Martians?
How can thought be exchanged? Maybe they haven’t got mouths!
BY WILLY LEY
BEFORE long Earthmen are going to Mars. On Mars they may find civilized beings of one form or another. These beings will have a language utterly different from those of earth. How can there be talk? How can there be understanding? How can communication be begun?
Here lies a special problem.
The first suggestion of how we might communicate with other worlds was made just one century ago. It was not made by some wild-eyed crackpot, but by one of the very great men in the history of science. He was the top mathematician of his time and possibly of all time—Karl Friedrich Gauss.
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FLIGHT TO THE STARS ON SUN POWER
Designed for travel from earth satellite to the far reaches off outer space, this amazing “solar butterfly” uses an electrical jet exhaust.
By Frank Tinsley
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER’S recent announcement of a federally-sponsored earth satellite project tears aside the curtain of secrecy that has long veiled our space travel research. To be launched sometime in 1957-58, Ike’s “cosmic basketball” will rocket to an orbit some two or three hundred miles above the earth’s surface and there circle the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of 18,000 mph. This tiny artificial moon, about two feet in diameter and weighing around 100 pounds, is the first of our space targets for tomorrow.
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2,000-Inch TELESCOPE May Reveal End of Universe
Proposed photo-electric instrument may bring the moon within a mile of the earth, solve the mystery of life on the planets and reveal the gigantic sun that holds the universe together. Here Dr. Luyten tells of discoveries awaiting the great telescope.
by DR. W. J. LUYTEN
Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota
REPORTS that Dr. Francois Henroteau, astronomer at the Dominion Observatory at Ottawa, is planning a new super-telescope which will far surpass in power all existing instruments, has stirred the imagination of scientists and laymen alike. Even the new 200-inch reflector still under construction for the Mt. Wilson Observatory will be dwarfed by Dr. Henro-teau’s projected giant, which is expected to equal the lightgathering power of a 2,000-inch mirror.
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Rockets on a timetable
By Richard F. Dempewolff
X IS ZERO; the exclamation point in time when the 58-foot, two-stage “Bumper” rocket—combining a modified V-2 with a 700-pound WAC Corporal riding its nose—will stand on its fiery tail above the new long-range proving ground in Cocoa, Fla., whoosh to the stratosphere and lay itself out for the world’s first long, horizontal stretch above the Atlantic.
No one knows when X will arrive. At . any moment, time may stand still while men, hanging half in and half out of yawning hatches in the side of the four-story monster rocket, hold up the count as they make final adjustments.
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Aiming Radio Signals at the Moon
RADIO signals from the moon can be heard, asserts Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor of the Naval Research Laboratory at Washington, D. C. The plan is to direct a short wave radio beam at the moon in such a manner that it will be reflected by the moon’s surface to produce an “echo” wave, audible through powerful receivers on earth some three seconds after the 500,000-mile trip through inter-stellar space.
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It seems the Army was a bit over optimistic. The first man made object to impact the moon was the Russian probe Luna 2 on September 14, 1959.
Station MOON
Radio rocket planned by Army would send hourly signals from the Moon.
STATION MOON may soon be calling Earth. The U. S. Army is constructing a Moon-bound radio-carrying rocket which it expects to complete early in 1948.
The missile will weigh only 100 lbs., including a 50-lb. radio capable of transmitting its signals across the intervening quarter-million miles of space.
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Inside Our First Two-Man Spacecraft
Not just a scaled-up Mercury capsule, the Gemini spacecraft is a ship for astronauts to fly
By Wesley S. Griswold
WITHIN the next few months, for the first time in our space program, two U.S. astronauts are expected to go into orbit together.
Their vehicle, the Gemini spacecraft, is far more than just a Mercury built for two. Besides being half again as roomy and twice as heavy as Mercury was, it is much more complex and efficient. That is because it will have many intricate tasks to perform before it completes its 12 scheduled missions.
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What ever happened to the Manned Space Stations?
By Dr. Wernher von Braun
Director of NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
DURING the years before Sputnik, several writers, including myself, predicted that one of the first objectives of manned space flight would be to establish one or more orbiting space stations.
Today we’re busy building rockets and spacecraft to take men to the moon. We have been fabulously successful with Project Mercury, and our Saturn I rockets have shown that they can reliably haul more than 10 tons of payload into orbit. Yet little is heard of manned space stations. Why is that so?
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LET’S CLAIM THE MOON - NOW!
We can beat the Reds with this plan for shooting our flag to the Moon by rocket.
By Pierre J. Huss
THE RUSSIANS, by their own admission, are getting ready to claim possession of the Moon. By 1970, judging from known Soviet plans for shooting rockets into the skies, the Moon will become sovereign territory of the Soviet Union—a “suburb” of Moscow. Obviously, then, now is the time for us to stake out our claim to the Moon if the interests of free mankind are to be safeguarded for future generations. Otherwise, the Russians will beat us to the punch by grabbing first and talking afterward.
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Life Aboard a Space Ship
Eating, washing and sleeping will be tough problems for passengers on the first flights to outer space.
By Willy Ley, World-Famed Rocket Authority
NEVER doze off without tying yourself down or you’ll crack your head on something. If you feel a sneeze coming, hang on to something or you’ll slam into the bulkhead. Don’t try to pour from a bottle and don’t smoke without turning up the air conditioner.” This advice may well be given to a space cadet in about 1980 by an experienced hand. All of it refers to the little tricks men will have to learn if they want to survive a trip through space and be reasonably comfortable while doing so. Reasonably comfortable; real comfort is not likely to come to the space lanes for many years.
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