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Spaceflight Before 1951
Spaceflight as a practical endeavor began during World War II with the development of operational liquid-fueled rockets. Beginning life as a weapon, the V-2 rocket, V-2 was pressed into peaceful service after the war at the United States' White Sands Missile Range as well as the Soviet Union's Kapustin Yar. This led to a flourishing of missile designs setting the stage for the exploration of space. The small American WAC Corporal rocket was evolved into the Aerobee, a much more powerful sounding rocket. Exploration of space began in earnest in 1947 with the flight of the first Aerobee, 46 of which had flown by the end of 1950. These and other rockets, both Soviet and American, returned the first direct data on air density, temperature, charged particles and magnetic fields in the Earth's upper atmosphere. By 1948, the United States Navy had evolved the V-2 design into the Viking (rocket), Viking capable of more than in altitude. The first Viking to accomplish this feat, numbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sounding Rocket
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are often used to launch instruments from above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites; the maximum altitude for balloons is about and the minimum for satellites is approximately . Due to their suborbital flight profile, sounding rockets are often much simpler than their counterparts built for orbital flight. Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between , such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. For certain purposes, sounding rockets may be flown to altitudes as high as to allow observing times of around 40 minutes to provide geophysical observations of the magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere. Etymology The origin of the term comes fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jarvis Island
Jarvis Island (; formerly known as Bunker Island or Bunker's Shoal) is an uninhabited coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an Territories of the United States#Unincorporated unorganized territories, unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Unlike most coral atolls, the lagoon on Jarvis is wholly dry. Jarvis is one of the Line Islands and, for statistical purposes, is also grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. Jarvis Island is the largest of three U.S. equatorial possessions, which include Baker Island and Howland Island. The US claimed it in the 19th century and mined it for guano. In the 20th century, it was the subject of a small settlement. It was attacked during WW2 and evacuated, leaving some buildings and a day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Range Safety
In rocketry, range safety or flight safety is ensured by monitoring the flight paths of missiles and launch vehicles, and enforcing strict guidelines for rocket construction and ground-based operations. Various measures are implemented to protect nearby people, buildings and infrastructure from the dangers of a rocket launch. Governments maintain many regulations on launch vehicles and associated ground systems, prescribing the procedures that need to be followed by any entity aiming to launch into space. Areas in which one or more spaceports are operated, or ranges, issue out closely guarded exclusion zones for air and sea traffic prior to launch, and close off certain areas to the public. Contingency procedures are performed if a vehicle malfunctions or veers off course mid-flight. Sometimes, a range safety officer (RSO) commands the flight or mission to end by sending a signal to the flight termination system (FTS) aboard the rocket. This takes measures to eliminate any mean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also borders the state of Texas to the east and southeast, Oklahoma to the northeast, and shares Mexico-United States border, an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua and Sonora to the south. New Mexico's largest city is Albuquerque, and its List of capitals in the United States, state capital is Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the U.S., founded in 1610 as the government seat of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, Nuevo México in New Spain. It also has the highest elevation of any state capital, at . New Mexico is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, fifth-largest of the fifty states by area, but with just over 2.1 million residents, ranks List of U.S. states and terri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking 4-08
Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Greenland, and Vinland (present-day Newfoundland in Canada, North America). In their countries of origin, and some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the early medieval history of northern and Eastern Europe, including the political and social development of England (and the English language) and parts of France, and established the embryo of Russia in Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators of their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encyclopedia Astronautica
The ''Encyclopedia Astronautica'' is a reference web site on Space exploration, space travel. The encyclopedia includes 79,433 articles with 13,741 illustrations, a comprehensive catalog of missiles, spacecraft, space technology, astronauts, and spaceflight from most countries that have had an active rocket research program. It provides biographies of important pioneers of spaceflight such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth Robert Goddard (scientist), Robert Goddard. It outlines various concepts of space stations including the NASA Space Shuttle and the Soviet Buran programme. Articles In addition, the encyclopedia contains many comprehensive review articles on specific space topics, among them: * ''Germany'' incl. an extensive list of German missile specialists who worked for USA, USSR and France after World War II. * ''Russia - Early Ballistic Missiles'' with a history of the involvement of German rocket specialists in Soviet rocketry. * ''Russia: The Real Moon Landin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RTV-G-4 Bumper
The RTV-G-4 Bumper was a sounding rocket built by the United States. A combination of the German V-2 rocket and the WAC Corporal sounding rocket, it was used to study problems pertaining to two-stage high-speed rockets. The Bumper program launched eight rockets between May 13, 1948 and July 29, 1950. The first six flights were conducted at the White Sands Missile Range; the seventh launch, Bumper 8 on July 24, 1950, was the first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. Bumper program Background The Bumper program to produce and launch a two-stage combination of the V-2 and WAC Corporal rockets was conceived in July 1946 by Colonel Holger N. Toftoy. Both the WAC Corporal and the V-2 had been extensively tested at White Sands Proving Grounds, the WAC Corporal's launch series occurring in late 1945/early 1946 and the V-2 launches beginning March 15, 1946. Bumper was started on June 20, 1947, to: * Investigate launching techniques for a two-stage missile and separation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerobee Rocket Launch From USS Norton Sound (AV-11) C1949
The Aerobee rocket was one of the United States' most produced and productive sounding rockets. Developed by the Aerojet Corporation, the Aerobee was designed to combine the altitude and launching capability of the V-2 with the cost effectiveness and mass production of the WAC Corporal. More than 1000 Aerobees were launched between 1947 and 1985, returning vast amounts of astronomical, physical, aeronomical, and biomedical data. Development Research using V-2 rockets after World War II produced valuable results concerning the nature of cosmic rays, the solar spectrum, and the distribution of atmospheric ozone. However, the limited supply and the expense of assembling and firing the V-2 rockets, as well as the small payload capacity of the first purpose-built sounding rocket, the WAC Corporal, created demand for a low cost sounding rocket to be used for scientific research. An Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) effort led by James Van Allen led to a contract presented 17 May 1946 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
émigré
An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social exile or self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French verb ''émigrer'' meaning "to emigrate". French Huguenots Many French Huguenots fled France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The American Revolution Many Loyalists, who made up large portions of colonial United States particularly in the South, emigrated by choice or were forced to leave the United States during and after the American Revolution. Common destinations were other parts of the British Empire, such as Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, Great Britain, Jamaica, and the British West Indies. The new government often awarded the lands of fleeing Loyalists to Patriot soldiers by way of land grants. The French Revolution Although the French Revolution began in 1789 as a bourgeois-led drive for increased political equality for the Third Estate, it soon turned into a violent popular rebell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with List of aircraft carriers in service, eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. With 336,978 personnel on active duty and 101,583 in the Ready Reserve, the U.S. Navy is the third largest of the United States military service branches in terms of personnel. It has 299 deployable combat vessels and about 4,012 operational aircraft as of 18 July 2023. The U.S. Navy is one of six United States Armed Forces, armed forces of the United States and one of eight uniformed services of the United States. The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MW 18014
MW 18014 was a German A-4 test rocket launched on 20 June 1944, at the Peenemünde Army Research Center in Peenemünde. It was the first man-made object to reach outer space, attaining an apogee of , well above the Kármán line that was established later as the lowest altitude of space. It was a vertical test launch, and was not intended to reach orbital velocity, so it returned and impacted Earth, making it the first sub-orbital spaceflight. Background Early A-4 rockets, despite being able to reach altitudes of 90 km, had suffered from multiple reliability problems. For example, a design fault in the forward part of the outer hull caused it to regularly fail mid-flight, resulting in the failure of as many as 70% of test launches. On one occasion, an A-4 rocket suffering from pogo oscillations during ascent veered 90 degrees off course then spiralled back down to its launch pit, killing four launch troops on site. The Peenemünde rocket team made a number of improve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
