Word: aloft
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...Then, on May 6, 1937, the biggest dirigible of all, the hydrogen-filled German Hindenburg, blew up and burned at Lakehurst, NJ. For a while the world all but gave up lighter-than-air craft. Later, using its almost limitless supply of nonflammable helium to keep the ships aloft, the U.S. began to concentrate on nonrigid blimps. With their flexible, rubberized skins, they seemed to ride through rough weather far more safely than their rigid predecessors. They became a valuable link in the chain of antisub and early-warning defense units that ring the U.S. coast...
...last October when a self-anointed Negro holy man, the Rev. Claudius Henry, R.B. (for "Repairer of the Breach") stirred an estimated 20,000 bearded cultists into a back-to-Africa frenzy. No one paid much attention, even when Henry's ''Ras Tafarians"* pranced about holding aloft an empty platter they swore would hold Premier Norman Manley's head if he blocked their way. In April, when raiding police found a cache of firearms and cement-packed conch shells (obviously intended as missiles) in a Ras Tafarian church, Jamaican authorities decided that the Rev. Claudius Henry...
...satellites went aloft attached firmly together. The first-stage Thor fired for about 160 seconds, then fell away while the Able-Star took over, firing for five minutes. Then it shut off its engine and coasted upward and around the earth for 18 more minutes. Over South America the engine blasted again for a few seconds, giving the final push needed to attain an orbit with an apogee of 570 miles and a perigee of 341 miles...
...satellite hitchhiker was a space Cinderella. Originally intended to be taken aloft by the U.S.'s ill-fated Vanguard, it was left forlornly on earth when the Vanguard program was discontinued. Rescued by Transit, it is now on a beautiful orbit that will probably keep it up for 50 years. Its instruments are sending information about solar ultraviolet and X rays, which do not pass through the earth's atmosphere but have effects on its upper layers. Data from the Cinderella satellite may explain radio blackouts and some kinds of weather...
...gyroscopes fall short of the ideal. They have trouble with friction and are thus inclined to misbehave. But as developed by Draper and his Instrumentation Laboratory, gyroscopes can keep a "stabilized platform" about as level as if it had no connection with the roaring missile that is carrying it aloft...