As opposed to the walking kind?

Also, henceforth I am going to use the spelling “computor”.

By the way, if you’re at all interested, this army training video detailing how an mechanical fire control computer works is amazing.

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Flying Missiles CAN Be Stopped!

Here is a sure-fire plan to down supersonic rockets like ducks—and wipe out the terror of sneak attacks.

By Frank Tinsley

HITLER was right when he ranted about the fearful havoc a “secret weapon” would wreak on his enemies. His V-2 rockets unleashed such terror on battered Britain that they nearly won the war—for the Nazis. For there was absolutely no defense against these mighty 3500-mph missiles—and no way to tell when—or where—they would strike next.
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Number One Rocket Man

A Silhouette of the Shy Massachusetts Physicist Who Pioneered in Rocket Research . . . Much to His Distress He Broke into the Noisier Newspapers

By G. EDWARD PENDRAY
Past President, the American Rocket Society
Editor of Astronautics

ON a flat, dry plain, 18 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico, rises a 60-foot tower of steel that has roused more curiosity, and has probably had a greater influence on the future of the world, than any other feature of all New Mexico’s arresting landscape.

From this tower, at irregular intervals, a Massachusetts physicist and his assistants send roaring into the skies certain gleaming, cigar-shaped projectiles of metal, powered by gasoline and liquid oxygen, and landed by parachutes.
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Rockets and Their Hazards

IT is now about a thousand years since the first Chinese rocket engineer tied one of his new go-devils to an arrow and took a shot at the invading Tartars. Perhaps the millennial celebration of that invention will include a shot with a much larger rocket at the moon. However, the present-day rocket experimenters are plugging away steadily, improving details in their equipment, and thinking in terms of thousands of feet of ascent; while the fiction writers glibly describe steering a rocket craft through asteroids and meteor showers, like a taxi through traffic. 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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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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MAIL VIA ROCKET

A missile expert predicts rocket mail by 1965. Here are MI’s ideas on how the system could function.

By Frank Tinsley

IT’S Friday noon. In the home office of a giant New York corporation the final drafts of a secret merger are being signed. If they can be signed by the party of the second part in San Francisco and be back here in the office before the stock market closes—so that “buy” orders can be rushed to dealers throughout the country—a possible Monday financial slump can be averted. The atmosphere is tense. A micro- photo machine has been moved into the president’s office and a trusted operator inserts the sheets, one by one. Two tiny prints of each emerge, one for the files and one for mailing. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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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Rockets Soup Up British Bike

A CROWD of 90,000 saw Bill Kitchen (right), noted British motorcycle racer, smoke up Wembley speedway in London recently (above) on the world’s first rocket-assisted motorcycle.
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LIQUID OXYGEN RUNS AMAZING AUTO

A daring attempt to drive an automobile with the terrific power of fuels like benzine burning in liquid oxygen succeeded at Berlin the other day. Shortly after, one of its two inventors was killed when he sought to repeat the feat.

Dr. Paul Heylandt, German liquid air expert, and Max Valier, builder of rocket cars, were in search of something more than merely a new kind of automobile. They were looking for a concentrated, lightweight fuel that might drive an airplane at tremendous heights across the Atlantic, or even send a projectile to the moon. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

EXPECT HIGH SPEED OF ROCKET-DRIVEN PLANE

If their calculations are correct, a barrage of rockets will soon send a ten-foot model plane whizzing through the air. Maurice Poirier and Franklin L. Wallace, of Los Angeles, Calif., built the model and if it flies they will attempt to build a full-sized craft on the same plan. They predict that the rockets will give the model a speed approaching ten miles a minute.