Aparently Pluto’s status as a planet has been in doubt from the very beginning.
Pluto Is an Exceedingly Minor Planet
SINCE his discovery, the planet Pluto has been a good deal of a disappointment to his sponsors. Now Dr. Baade, of Mt. Wilson observatory, estimates that Pluto’s mass is something like that of Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn. But the mass of Titan, though the diameter is 2,600 miles, is but l/50th that of the Earth, or less than twice that of the moon. So that Pluto ranks as the largest asteroid, rather than the smallest planet; and it may be necessary to look farther for unknown planets.
According to this article the answer is: exactly like us.
WHAT WILL “SPACE PEOPLE” LOOK LIKE?
by Willy Ley
Condensed from This Week Magazine
A short time ago man put artificial satellites in space. Sometime in 1958 we will launch a piloted aircraft into space. Some scientists are confident we could hit the moon with an unmanned rocket today. Within 10 or 20 years spaceflight will be an almost everyday occurrence.
Once we are in space, the question arises — will we be the only ones? Will we find other intelligent beings plying the spaceways, and if so. what will they be like? We cannot predict everything, of course, but we do have a good idea of what space people might look like.
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This thing kind of looks like a little Deathstar, and it will only take 10 trips to build. Let’s do it!
Also, they claim the atomic reactor reaches tempuratures of 600 billion degrees. Does this seem a little high to anyone else?
Fortress on a Skyhook
The U.S. is working on plans for a satellite base, Defense Secretary Forrestal reveals. Take a long look at this man-made moon—and learn how it may rule the world.
By Frank Tinsley
EVEN Jules Verne would be amazed at the latest activities of the U. S. Department of Defense. Secretary James Forrestal disclosed recently that his department is working on a “satellite base” to revolve around the world like a miniature moon, as a military outpost in space.
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To think, I’d always believed that redshift was caused by the doppler effect. How silly of me. Actually the light just gets really tired! (You would too if you’d traveled for 13 billion light years without a single vacation day). And of course blueshift occurs when the light is really happy or excited, like when it wins a race against… well anything really.
According to Wikipedia redshift was first used to measure the velocity of a star moving away from the Earth in 1868 so they really don’t have an excuse for not getting the memo. My only guess is that they couldn’t accept the fact that practically everything in the Universe is moving away from us and that the farther away it is, the faster it’s going. This of course leads to crazy ideas like the big bang.
Light Gets Tired and Turns Red
THAT light rays get tired as they travel for millions of years through space, fritter away a little of themselves century by century and end by changing color so that rays which started as blue ones may finish by becoming red is suggested by scientists. Astronomers have discovered that light rays coming to the earth from the most distant nebulae actually show what is called the “red shift,” which means the light from these nebulae is shifted a little toward the red end of the spectrum. What may be happening is that each tiny bit of each light ray may lose a small fraction of its substance as it moves through space.
The funny thing about this ad is that “NASA Space Telescope” was the original name of the Hubble Space Telescope and Perkin-Elmer is the contractor that delivered a flawed main mirror, requiring a very expensive and difficult repair mission.
Responsive Technology from Perkin-Elmer
The NASA Space Telescope: Getting ready for the clearest look yet into space
The NASA Space Telescope, scheduled for launch by the Space Shuttle in the 1980s, will orbit the earth at an altitude of 310 miles. Unlike ground-based telescopes which are restricted to a narrow spectral window and subject to distortions by the earth’s atmosphere, the Space Telescope will provide astronomers with the clearest view yet of the universe.
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What percentage of Scientific American readers could possibly be in the market for an Inertial Upper Stage? Frankly I would be worried if someone was planning to launch a satellite, stumbled across this ad and proclaimed “Aha! Now I know what to do about apogee injection!”
USE THE BOEING IUS AND FORGET ABOUT
WORRIES 1 THROUGH 11
If you’ve been thinking about choosing the right upper stage to get your own spacecraft off the ground, you’re no doubt going through a little anxiety right now. What about reliability? How about performance? Who’s responsible? Costs? Accuracy? Things like that. We’d like to make a case for the Boeing Inertial Upper Stage — the only all-inclusive, worry-free, complete package available.
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This looks like some kind of Geiger inspired S&M gear.
HERE’S WHAT WE’LL WEAR
Designers are already working on the styles the well-dressed space man needs to survive.
By Lloyd Mallan
Author of Men, Rockets And Space Rats
IT MAY or may not be true that clothes make the man, but one thing is certain: when he starts traveling in outer space his life will depend on the clothes he wears. For the past decade a unique group of clothing stylists has been hard at work determining the cut and materials of future fashions in space dress. None of this group is a designer by profession. Among its varied members are biophysicists; physiologists, anthropologists, electronic scientists and doctors of medicine. But they have one thing in common: all are willing to risk their own necks to perfect equipment that will make it safe for other men to fly through the alien vacuum of space. Acting as their own guinea pigs, they are locked into altitude chambers, spun wildly on centrifuges, and closed up in insulated rooms. In the process, they discover whether or not their space fashions are practical. And in order to be absolutely certain they plunge needles into their veins and spines, under their skin and over their brains. Wires connected to the needles carry their slightest physical reaction.
But out of it all, in just ten years, have come the means to prevent the horrors that could happen in space to the unaccustomed human body. Aeromedical scientists at the Air Force’s Wright Air Development Center (who supplied photos on these pages) now know that man can fly beyond the atmosphere without his tissues exploding, brain hemorrhaging, blood cells dying or lungs collapsing.
