Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...story has an American rocket ship encountering two curious phenomena in outer space. One is the entrance to the biggest black hole anyone aboard has seen, the other is a large, rather charmingly antique-looking space vehicle parked near it with its lights out. The men of the former craft are absolutely basic: one stalwart captain, one joky copilot, one overdedicated scientist, one slightly shifty civilian and one pretty lady whose function is to be placed in jeopardy. The sole proprietor of the ship they run into is Maximilian Schell, a great long-lost scientist whose ego trips...
...Edwards Air Force Base, Hollywood Stunt Man Stan Barrett, 36, drove a car at 739.666 m.p.h. to become the first person ever to break the sound barrier on land. Barrett's car will not be in showrooms quite yet. The three-wheel vehicle was powered by a rocket engine as well as a Sidewinder missile to throw it into supersonic overdrive. In EPA terms it logged .01 m.p.g...
Last week the space agency announced the award of $1.15 million contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for preliminary studies of a new rocket. Its purpose: to power an unmanned spacecraft that will intercept Halley's Comet as it sweeps around the sun. Known as the solar electric propulsion system, the engine could become the workhorse of deep space, carrying probes on far-flung missions across the solar system...
...engine is far more economical. With electricity generated by solar panels, it strips electrons off the atoms of vaporized mercury passing through a coffee-can-like chamber, converting them to ions. Expelled at high speeds in a focused beam, the charged particles act like a rocket exhaust, propelling the craft forward. Though its thrust is minuscule and far too feeble to lift payloads from the earth, the ion engine performs efficiently in the vacuum of space. It can function for years because it draws on solar energy and uses fuel sparingly. It can be stopped and restarted countless times...
...Congress provides the needed funding, the probe will be carried into earth orbit by the space shuttle in the summer of 1985. Boosted by a conventional rocket, it will fly off toward the comet, gradually accelerated by its cluster of six or eight small ion engines, during the four-month journey. On command from earth, it will drop a small instrument-packed probe provided by the European Space Agency directly into the comet's head, which scientists believe is made up of icy debris and a smattering of organic molecules. Because comets have probably changed little since they were...