Future GIs to ride rocket troopship

Troop transport in 45 minutes to a brush-fire war anywhere in the world is proposed by Douglas Aircraft space engineers.

The 80-by-210-foot re-usable rocket shown at right would speed 17,000 m.p.h., carrying 1,200 troops and equipment. Landing upright, it would debark them by portable ramps, jet packs, and rope ladders.

It’s called ICARUS: Intercontinental Aerospace craft—Range Unlimited System.

I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work. Where would all the material from that sphere go? I suppose if you used a nuke then you could vaporize it, but then I don’t think you’d want to live there.

Blast a Home in the Moon?

THE latest in a series of proposals for your lunar living facilities—in case you decide to make the trip—suggests construction could begin even before you land. A projectile from Earth would carry special shaped charges to blast a shaft (Fig. 2A) in the Moon’s surface. At a predetermined depth it would blow a spherical chamber (2B).
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a giant space condom!

Inflatable Solar Collector

Rocketing into space in a canister the size of a teacup, a solar collector will billow out to a conical shape with a metalized Mylar reflector that is seven feet in diameter.

The sun’s rays striking the reflector are focused onto a collector. These rays will be transformed into heat energy which then may be used to power various electrical and mechanical instruments in space.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

THE POOR MAN’S TELESCOPE

AS EVERY astronomer knows, a steady mounting is a must when using high magnification. Generally, to obtain the required steadiness, it has been considered necessary to build a strong, heavy instrument, made with high precision, often mounted on concrete piers. The disadvantage of such instruments, in their lack of portability, has led us to develop the six-inch reflecting telescope and mounting shown here. We feel it combines features especially suited to the needs of the amateur. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Machines that “Destroy” the Earth

Intricate mechanisms at New York Planetarium show how celestial forces could burn, blast or freeze the world.

By HARRY SAMUELS

THREE times a day in five spectacular ways the earth “dies” in the Hayden Planetarium in New York.

First performed in 1939, the Planetarium’s sky drama was shut down by the war in 1941 and was not resumed until recently. The new “End of the World” show is considerably more vivid than its prewar predecessor because of added startling effects and more authentic background material worked out by the Planetarium technical and scientific staffs. The pictures and captions on the accompanying pages explain how these effects are obtained.
Read the rest of this entry »

I googled Ronald Benrey, the kid who made the satellite to see what he went on to do. I was rather surprised when my own site came up in the results. Apparently Ronald went on to write for Popular Science and was the author of this excellent article about making your own laser.

view additional pages

Instrumenting an Earth Satellite

Prize-winning Science Fair model reels off space secrets of the push of a button

WEBSTERS DEFINITION of Argus is incomplete. In Greek mythology, Argus has another connotation – it denotes the starry heavens. In all respects, it is a fitting name for a model satellite – “Argus I” -built by Ronald Michael Benrey and entered in the National Science Fair.

The satellite took second prize at the Fair and took first prize inn the Air Force’s Awards Program, as well as receiving other citations. While it doesn’t have the 100 eyes of the mythological Argus, it does have seven “eyes” – sensors designed to “see” such things as temperature, ultraviolet light and micrometeorites—as well as two “voices”—transmitters to relay the information to receivers.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

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.
Read the rest of this entry »