Wow, this looks like it’s harder to make than than the street legal kart.
Junior Cadet Space Helmet
As any budding young astronaut will tell you, his most important piece of equipment is a realistic helmet with light, radio, oxygen tanks, and plenty of colorful armor.
WETHER they’re solving re-entry problems on the living room banister or stalking Martians in the orchard, junior spacemen need plenty of imagination-inspiring equipment. So vital a piece as the helmet should be built at home where the astronaut can help and be sure the construction meets space-age requirements.
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I love this. The 3 page description of how man will explore the moon includes this crucial fact: “Movies may be shown, if desired.”
HOW WE WILL EXPLORE THE MOON
An original MI design by FRANK TINSLEY
EARTHMEN who land on the moon will need a special lunar vehicle for exploration. The vehicle must be self-sustaining and capable of traversing both the smooth, dust-paved crater beds and climbing the steep rocky passes of their mountainous rims.
Mi’s design for this difficult job is a giant Moon Explorer unicycle with a spherical body mounted inside its rolling rim and composed almost entirely of inflated fabric parts. These constitute the lightest possible structure and can be easily disassembled and deflated for storage.
The Moon Explorer is 32 ft. high. It is driven by electric motors and stabilized and steered by gyroscopic tilting. Power is derived from a circular “parasol” faced with solar batteries that always face the sun. Those atop the disc are of the light-actuated type. The bottom units are thermal generators, extracting electricity from reflected ground heat. This arrangement uses every inch of area and constitutes a simple, long-lived generator with no moving parts. It not only produces free power but also serves to shield the vehicle’s body from the burning rays of the unfiltered lunar sun. Despite its large size, the parasol is extremely light in weight. It consists of an envelope of thin, inflated fabric, stiffened by internal spokes and a rim of inflated tubing. It is carried above the wheel tread on four light magnesium legs and mounted on a ball-joint so it can be tilted to any angle. An electric eye, linked to gyros in the hub, controls its movements automatically.
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Russian Proposes GLOBAL TV
THE RATHER LIMITED conception of radio transmission we had back in 1925, when we wondered whether radio waves could be propagated through space (see opposite page), has progressed to a stage where today we are near the point of transmitting television through space. With the launching of the first Sputnik last October, the dream of global TV received a tremendous shot in the arm and it has gathered momentum with each additional satellite thrown into the sky—both Russian and American. The magazine which first published data on Sputnik I, the Soviet periodical Radio, has outlined a plan which would allow nearly every TV set anywhere on earth to pick up a program transmitted from any other point. Television today, of course, is pretty much limited by line of sight, except in those areas which have coaxial cables, and a few spots which are equipped with over-the-horizon scatter facilities. The system proposed by engineer V. Petrov would make use of satellites which would pick up signals from stations on earth and bounce them to other satellites for more distant relay.
“STATIONARY” SATELLITES
If a satellite is launched from the equator so that it follows an eastward track at the proper speed and height, it will remain over one spot on the equator. In other words, if it went into orbit over Belem in Brazil, or Stanleyville in the Belgian Congo, or Singapore in Malaya, it would remain fixed in the sky over that spot. This is because—if the velocity and height are correct—the speed of the satellite will exactly match the eastward rotation of the earth. It will be making an orbit of the earth once in 24 hours (compared to the 90 to 106 minutes or so for the present satellites. Since the earth rotates on its axis once in 24 hours, there will be no relative motion between the two spheres.
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I’m not sure if they still do this at the new Hayden, or if they do elsewhere, but it’s really cool. Basically using a set of mirrors they project an image of the sun onto the roof of the planetarium, so you get 26 foot wide image that’s safe to stare at.
Bringing the Sun Indoors
AT the Hayden Planetarium in New York a huge 26-foot image of the sun is being projected on the interior of the dome every day that the sun shines. This is accomplished by means of a first system of moving and fixed flat mirrors for bringing the sun’s image indoors and a second system of mirrors and lenses for enlarging and projecting it.
The actual sun is shown at the top of the drawing. Its rays are caught by an eight-inch flat mirror mounted on an axis parallel with the earth’s axis. A clock-like mechanism slowly turns this mirror as the earth’s turning “moves” the sun. This image, after passing through an opening in the building, is kept constantly spotted on a second flat mirror which is permanently fixed in position. It in turn passes the image downward to the third element of the Jong optical train, a flat mirror fixed at a 45-degree angle which turns it horizontally. The sun’s image is now where it can be used but as yet it is neither magnified nor projected.
Magnification is done in an ordinary eight-inch reflecting telescope, just as it would be if that telescope were directed at the sun out of doors; and since it is possible with any telescope to view the image not alone by looking into the eyepiece but also by projecting it on a screen at some distance from the eyepiece, the same is done at the planetarium. Here the distance is long, hence the image is very large—larger, in fact, than any solar image previously projected by similar methods. All this apparatus—the coelostat, fixed flats, and telescope—is entirely separate from the regular planetarium apparatus and could be similarly used with any ordinary house or building.
The Amateur Telescope Maker’s Page
A Grinding Rig
WALKING around a barrel is undoubtedly a tedious procedure, but on the other hand it is the simplest method of grinding and polishing a telescope mirror. However, a number of our disciples have evidently gotten just a bit tired of this ambulatory procedure and have written to inqure whether there exists a more satisfactory and sedentary method of grinding said telescope mirrors. There is. As a matter of fact a number of such grinding rigs are described in Amateur Telescoping Making edited by Albert Ingalls.
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This reminds me of the ill-fated Rotary Rocket company.
Daring Rocketmen to Invade the Stratosphere
The rocket-shooters are going to pitch in again this coming summer. Undaunted by reverses and tragedies during the past year’s experiments, the rocketeers are tackling their work with renewed vigor and ambition, plus improved apparatus and chemicals.
Ernst Loebell, famous German engineer and rocket designer, promises to bring the rocket engines to their greatest point of achievement next summer. He is now in this country and is an active worker in the Cleveland Rocket Society.
Loebell has been carrying on bis preliminary experiments on the big Hanna estate in a suburb of Cleveland. In their operations the Cleveland group has been making use of the lessons taught by the experiments of Loebell’s countryman, the late Reinhold Tilling, a noted radio engineer and rocket builder.
Prior to his death. Tilling had been experimenting with rockets and rocket planes for months. The success of a rocket which reached a height of (6,000 feet in 1931 spurred him on to the construction of a rocket with glider wings which unfolded when the fuel was exhausted and brought the projectile gently to earth. This feat was hailed as one of the first practical steps toward the development of mail and passenger carrying rockets.
The Tilling rockets were set in motion by telignition from a distance of 100 yards. They attained a speed of 700 miles an hour and landed five miles from the starting point, in accordance with calculations. Herr Tilling was working on a system designed to manipulate his rockets by radio control when he and a female assistant were killed in the explosion of a rocket which they were charging.
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This doesn’t look too practical.
A spaceman could use this suit while exploring the moon - and even rest in it if he’s on a long hike. It is equipped with retractable tripod legs that will hold it up off the ground and a built-in seat that he can curl up on while easing his tired feet.
The suit is made of aluminum, has a circular plastic window and nylon-coated neprene arms and legs. The tank strapped to the back supplies oxygen and contains a cabon-dioxide absorbent. The controls are inside the cylinder along with shelves of food for lengthy trips. Tools the wearer could use would be similar to those lying on the ground. The suit was built by Republic Aviation, weighs 120 pounds, which on the low-gravity moon would be equivealent to 20 on earth.
