Word: drag
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...angle of about 34° and coming only as far north as Atlanta. At its highest point (apogee), the orbit rises to 1,700 miles above the earth, descending to about 200 miles (perigee). The round trip takes 114 minutes. This is a "safe" orbit, above nearly all the drag of the atmosphere, and higher than the orbits of the Russian satellites...
This was too good to last, Namias knew. He kept his eyes on the Pacific, and about the end of December he saw what he was looking for: a great wave in the planetary wind. It was moving toward the U.S., and when it arrived it would surely drag down from the north a vast amount of the bitter cold that had been accumulating there. So on Dec. 30 Namias predicted that during January the U.S. east of the Rockies would get extra-cold weather...
...Smithsonian scientists calculated the density of the upper atmosphere by studying the gradually shrinking orbit of Sputnik I. Under the old theory, Sputnik I should stay up for about 27 months before aerodynamic drag and gravity pull it down into air dense enough to destroy it by the heat of friction. But now the Smithsonian scientists think that the moon will set for good after only 3½ months, flare into destruction sometime around the middle of January...
...area at tremendous speeds, probably will have to make only minor adjustments in their plans. But if the Smithsonian's finding checks out, the perigee (minimum orbital altitude) for a long-lived satellite will have to be raised from 140 miles to 180 miles because of the decelerating drag of air particles at the lower altitude. Anticipated perigee for Vanguard: a safe 200 miles. Scientists at Washington's Carnegie Institution are still puzzling over a radio phenomenon of Sputnik I: a "ghost" signal that registered on their receivers when the artificial satellite was on the opposite side...
...heating problem caused by the re-entry of a ballistic missile into the earth's atmosphere might be solved by a blunt-nose cone, highly resistant to the air, many of his colleagues were skeptical. The prevailing theory backed a needle-shaped cone that would offer minimum aerodynamic drag. Allen's blunt shape built up temperatures in the tens of thousands of degrees, but it saved the cone from melting away by creating a wide-angle shock wave that carried away much of the heat. Allen's design has since been adopted by missilemen throughout the industry...