Word: skyrocketed
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quick personal decision to execute the classic naval maneuver known as getting the hell out of here. Our escorts and minesweeper broke off and began firing back at the Communist PTs and gunboats that had ambushed us. Blood-red tracers zipped, skipped and finally floated out like spent skyrocket bursts as they sought targets. Brilliant, diamond-bright air bursts from Communist shore batteries to the east rained shrapnel down. Over the roar of small boats' motors rose the baritone whump of Nationalist three-inchers and the chatter of both sides' machine guns...
...reservoir demanded by a large scale program of world development. Conservative estimates put the capital now needed by under-developed nations at $14 billion per year. As basic projects lead to new demands for more material improvement in the next few years, the financial need is certain to skyrocket. A little more land and a little more rice will not satisfy peasants who have suddenly begun to sense that they can change their conditions...
Science fiction teems with spaceships, but in real life they do not exist. No man-carrying craft has even approached space-yet. Now, after a two-year study, the Office of Naval Research and Douglas Aircraft Co. (builder of the supersonic Skyrocket) have decided that an "inhabited" rocket airplane can be built that will soar to 750,000 ft. (140 miles) and land on the earth safely. It will not be a spaceship in the strictest sense, but the air that it will traverse at the top of its flight will be as thin as a laboratory vacuum...
...Chuck" Yeager (TIME, April 18, 1949), first man to hurtle through the sound barrier (in Bell's X-I), makes an entrance in Bridgeman's book that is worthy of jet-age grand opera-and typical of Yeager. As Bridgeman started his first rocket flight in the Skyrocket, bright sunlight made it difficult to read the dials in the cockpit. Suddenly a shadow hovered over his face, and a relaxed voice came over the radio: "Is that better, son?" Yeager, flying chase in an F-86 jet, had screened the sun. It was Bridgeman's introduction...
Bridgeman proves the necessary role of man even in the most highly developed planes. Engineers said the Skyrocket could not survive a spin. Bridgeman fell 7,000 ft. in ten seconds in a spin-and survived it. Another time engineers said the Skyrocket would not handle badly if sent into a sharp pushover at high altitude, but Test Pilot Bridgeman discovered: "Harder she rolls, harder and faster. The flat horizon line flips wildly through the squinting slit windows. I fight the crazy gyration with the ailerons. They are no weapons. They are feathers in a windstorm ... I release my hand...