1.
Launch vehicle
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In spaceflight, a launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket used to carry a payload from Earths surface into outer space. A launch system includes the launch vehicle, the launch pad, Earth orbital launch vehicles typically have at least two stages, and sometimes as many as four or more. Expendable launch vehicles are designed for one-time use and they usually separate from their payload and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry. In contrast, reusable vehicles are designed to be recovered intact. The Space Shuttle was a part of a vehicle with components used for multiple orbital spaceflights. SpaceX has developed a rocket launching system to successfully bring back a part—the first stage—of their Falcon 9. A fully reusable VTVL design is planned for all parts of the ITS launch vehicle, Launch vehicles are often classified by the amount of mass they can carry into orbit. For example, a Proton rocket can lift 22,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, Launch vehicles are also characterized by their number of stages. Rockets with as many as five stages have been successfully launched, additionally, launch vehicles are very often supplied with boosters supplying high early thrust, normally burning with other engines. Boosters allow the engines to be smaller, reducing the burnout mass of later stages to allow larger payloads. Other frequently reported characteristics of vehicles are the launching nation or space agency. For example, the European Space Agency is responsible for the Ariane V, many launch vehicles are considered part of a historical line of vehicles of same or similar name, e. g. the Atlas V is the latest Atlas rocket. A small-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting up to 2,000 kg of payload into low Earth orbit, a medium-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 2,000 to 20,000 kg of payload into LEO. A heavy-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 20,000 to 50,000 kg of payload into LEO, a super-heavy lift vehicle is capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg of payload into LEO. It refers to its 1,500 kg to LEO Vega launch vehicle as light lift, sounding rockets have long been used for brief, inexpensive unmanned space and microgravity experiments. Current human-rated suborbital launch vehicles include SpaceShipOne and the upcoming SpaceShipTwo, minimizing air drag requires a reasonably high ballistic coefficient, a ratio of length to diameter greater than ten. This generally results in a vehicle that is at least 20 m long. Leaving the atmosphere as early on in the flight as possible provides a velocity loss due to air drag of around 300 m/s, Launch vehicles of sufficient size are capable of launching payloads smaller than their orbital capability, to the Moon or beyond
2.
Payload (air and space craft)
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Payload is the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of the flight or mission, the payload of a vehicle may include cargo, passengers, flight crew, munitions, scientific instruments or experiments, extra fuel, when optionally carried, is also considered part of the payload. In a commercial context, payload may refer only to revenue-generating cargo or paying passengers, for a rocket, the payload can be a satellite, space probe, or spacecraft carrying humans, animals, or cargo. For a ballistic missile, the payload is one or more warheads and related systems, the fraction of payload to the total liftoff weight of the air or spacecraft is known as the payload fraction. When the weight of the payload and fuel are considered together, in spacecraft, mass fraction is normally used, which is the ratio of payload to everything else, including the rocket structure. There is a natural trade-off between the payload and the range of an aircraft, a payload range diagram illustrates the trade-off. The top horizontal line represents the maximum payload and it is limited structurally by maximum zero-fuel weight of the aircraft. Maximum payload is the difference between maximum zero-fuel weight and operational empty weight, moving left-to-right along the line shows the constant maximum payload as the range increases. More fuel needs to be added for more range, the vertical line represents the range at which the combined weight of the aircraft, maximum payload and needed fuel reaches the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft. If the range is increased beyond that point, payload has to be sacrificed for fuel, the maximum take-off weight is limited by a combination of the maximum net power of the engines and the lift/drag ratio of the wings. The diagonal line after the point shows how reducing the payload allows increasing the fuel when taking off with the maximum take-off weight. The second kink in the curve represents the point at which the fuel capacity is reached. Flying further than that point means that the payload has to be reduced further, the absolute range is thus the range at which an aircraft can fly with maximum possible fuel without carrying any payload.314 m3 and 2 x 0.414 m3 Envelope, each 1. So even when the airplane has been loaded with its maximum payload that the wings can support, launch and transport system differ not only on the payload that can be carried but also in the stresses and other factors placed on the payload. The payload must not only be lifted to its target, it must also arrive safely, to ensure this the payload, such as a warhead or satellite, is designed to withstand certain amounts of various types of punishment on the way to its destination. Most aircraft payloads are carried within the fuselage for similar reasons, outsize cargo may require a fuselage with unusual proportions, such as the Super Guppy. The various constraints placed on the system can be roughly categorized into those that cause physical damage to the payload. Heavy-lift launch vehicle Medium-lift launch vehicle Tsiolkovsky rocket equation Shannon Ackert, using the Payload/Range and Takeoff Field Length Charts in the Airplane Characteristics for Airport Planning Documents
3.
Low Earth orbit
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A low Earth orbit is an orbit around Earth with an altitude between 160 kilometers, and 2,000 kilometers. Objects below approximately 160 kilometers will experience very rapid orbital decay, with the exception of the 24 human beings who flew lunar flights in the Apollo program during the four-year period spanning 1968 through 1972, all human spaceflights have taken place in LEO or below. The International Space Station conducts operations in LEO, the altitude record for a human spaceflight in LEO was Gemini 11 with an apogee of 1,374.1 kilometers. All crewed space stations to date, as well as the majority of satellites, have been in LEO, objects in LEO encounter atmospheric drag from gases in the thermosphere or exosphere, depending on orbit height. Due to atmospheric drag, satellites do not usually orbit below 300 km, objects in LEO orbit Earth between the denser part of the atmosphere and below the inner Van Allen radiation belt. The mean orbital velocity needed to maintain a stable low Earth orbit is about 7.8 km/s, calculated for circular orbit of 200 km it is 7.79 km/s and for 1500 km it is 7.12 km/s. The delta-v needed to achieve low Earth orbit starts around 9.4 km/s, atmospheric and gravity drag associated with launch typically adds 1. 3–1.8 km/s to the launch vehicle delta-v required to reach normal LEO orbital velocity of around 7.8 km/s. Equatorial low Earth orbits are a subset of LEO and these orbits, with low inclination to the Equator, allow rapid revisit times and have the lowest delta-v requirement of any orbit. Orbits with an inclination angle to the equator are usually called polar orbits. Higher orbits include medium Earth orbit, sometimes called intermediate circular orbit, orbits higher than low orbit can lead to early failure of electronic components due to intense radiation and charge accumulation. Although the Earths pull due to gravity in LEO is not much less than on the surface of the Earth, people, a low Earth orbit is simplest and cheapest for satellite placement. It provides high bandwidth and low communication time lag, but satellites in LEO will not be visible from any point on the Earth at all times. Earth observation satellites and spy satellites use LEO as they are able to see the surface of the Earth more clearly as they are not so far away and they are also able to traverse the surface of the Earth. A majority of satellites are placed in LEO, making one complete revolution around the Earth in about 90 minutes. The International Space Station is in a LEO about 400 km above the Earths surface, since it requires less energy to place a satellite into a LEO and the LEO satellite needs less powerful amplifiers for successful transmission, LEO is used for many communication applications. Because these LEO orbits are not geostationary, a network of satellites is required to provide continuous coverage, lower orbits also aid remote sensing satellites because of the added detail that can be gained. Remote sensing satellites can also take advantage of sun-synchronous LEO orbits at an altitude of about 800 km, envisat is one example of an Earth observation satellite that makes use of this particular type of LEO. The LEO environment is becoming congested with space debris due to the frequency of object launches and this has caused growing concern in recent years, since collisions at orbital velocities can easily be dangerous, and even deadly
4.
Kourou
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Kourou is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. In addition to being a district in French Guiana, it is also the main town in that district. Within the Kourou district lies the Guiana Space Centre, France, some 60 km northwest of the French Guyanese capital Cayenne the Kourou River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. At the mouth of this sits the town of Kourou. There are three lakes within the city limits, Lake Bois Diable, Lake Marie-Claire, and Lake Bois Chaudat. Long white sand beaches and some rocky outcrops line the towns ocean coast, the town had a fast-growing population of 25,918 inhabitants at the 2007 census. Much of it burned down in a fire in 2006, Guiana in general has a high level of crime compared to the rest of Frances départements, Kourou has an average of two armed robberies a day. A march protesting the high level of insecurity felt by most of the population was held in Kourou on 27 October 2006, shopkeepers of Chinese descent in particular are often targeted by armed robbers, their cash registers emptied and some products stolen. Kourou is the port of departure for those going to the îles du Salut and it is also common for many to go up the river in canoes on weekends to camp in the forest. The Guiana Space Centre, where the European Space Agency starts missions, is located a little behind, part of the town and the islands are closed during rocket launches. Not much is known of the pre-colonial era, the area was mostly populated by Kalina, or Galibi before the arrival of the French in the late 17th century. There is a place not far from the town called les Roches Gravées, vicente Yáñez Pinzón sailed along most of the north coast of South America and passed by the current location of Kourou in 1500. The Society of Jesus was disbanded in 1762, however, the mission at Kourou being abandoned by the Jesuits, the engineers Mentelle and Tugny designed the layout of the future town. This resulted in the called the Bourg, around the Church of Saint Catherine. That same year,1763, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris, having lost their largest and richest colony, the French decided to send a large expedition to Guiana, commanded by Choiseul. Around 10,000 to 12,000 people, mostly Frenchmen, tempted by stories of an El Dorado on the side of the ocean. The small town, surrounded by marshes and rainforest, was unprepared for such an influx of people. Those remaining fled to the îles du Salut, free of mosquitoes due to constant winds, previously they had been known as the îles du Diable, and one of the islands retains the name to this day
5.
Newton (unit)
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The newton is the International System of Units derived unit of force. It is named after Isaac Newton in recognition of his work on classical mechanics, see below for the conversion factors. One newton is the force needed to one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in direction of the applied force. In 1948, the 9th CGPM resolution 7 adopted the name newton for this force, the MKS system then became the blueprint for todays SI system of units. The newton thus became the unit of force in le Système International dUnités. This SI unit is named after Isaac Newton, as with every International System of Units unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is upper case. Note that degree Celsius conforms to this rule because the d is lowercase. — Based on The International System of Units, section 5.2. Newtons second law of motion states that F = ma, where F is the applied, m is the mass of the object receiving the force. The newton is therefore, where the symbols are used for the units, N for newton, kg for kilogram, m for metre. In dimensional analysis, F = M L T2 where F is force, M is mass, L is length, at average gravity on earth, a kilogram mass exerts a force of about 9.8 newtons. An average-sized apple exerts about one newton of force, which we measure as the apples weight, for example, the tractive effort of a Class Y steam train and the thrust of an F100 fighter jet engine are both around 130 kN. One kilonewton,1 kN, is 102.0 kgf,1 kN =102 kg ×9.81 m/s2 So for example, a platform rated at 321 kilonewtons will safely support a 32,100 kilograms load. Specifications in kilonewtons are common in safety specifications for, the values of fasteners, Earth anchors. Working loads in tension and in shear, thrust of rocket engines and launch vehicles clamping forces of the various moulds in injection moulding machines used to manufacture plastic parts
6.
Specific impulse
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Specific impulse is a measure of the efficiency of rocket and jet engines. By definition, it is the total impulse delivered per unit of propellant consumed and is equivalent to the generated thrust divided by the propellant flow rate. If mass is used as the unit of propellant, then specific impulse has units of velocity, if weight is used instead, then specific impulse has units of time. Multiplying flow rate by the gravity before dividing it into the thrust. In rockets, this means the engine is more efficient at gaining altitude, distance and this is much less of a consideration in jet engines that employ wings and outside air for combustion to carry payloads that are much heavier than the propellant. Specific impulse includes the contribution to impulse provided by air that has been used for combustion and is exhausted with the spent propellant. Jet engines use air, and therefore have a much higher specific impulse than rocket engines. The specific impulse in terms of propellant mass spent is in units of distance per time and this is higher than the actual exhaust velocity because the mass of the combustion air is not being accounted for. Actual and effective exhaust velocity are the same in rocket engines not utilizing air, Specific impulse is inversely proportional to specific fuel consumption by the relationship Isp = 1/ for SFC in kg/ and Isp = 3600/SFC for SFC in lb/lbf-hr. The amount of propellant is normally measured either in units of mass or weight, however, if propellant weight is used, an impulse divided by a force turns out to be a unit of time, and so specific impulses are measured in seconds. These two formulations are both used and differ from each other by a factor of g0, the dimensioned constant of gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth. Note that the rate of change of momentum of a rocket per unit time is equal to the thrust, the higher the specific impulse, the less propellant is needed to produce a given thrust during a given time. In this regard a propellant is more efficient the greater its specific impulse and this should not be confused with energy efficiency, which can decrease as specific impulse increases, since propulsion systems that give high specific impulse require high energy to do so. It is important that thrust and specific impulse not be confused, the specific impulse is a measure of the impulse produced per unit of propellant expended, while thrust is a measure of the momentary or peak force supplied by a particular engine. In many cases, propulsion systems with high specific impulses—some ion thrusters reach 10,000 seconds—produce low thrusts. When calculating specific impulse, only propellant that is carried with the vehicle use is counted. Air resistance and the inability to keep a high specific impulse at a fast burn rate are why all the propellant is not used as fast as possible. If an engine weighs more in order to gain a specific impulse, it may not be as efficient in gaining altitude, distance
7.
Dinitrogen tetroxide
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Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms a mixture with nitrogen dioxide. Dinitrogen tetroxide is an oxidizer that is hypergolic upon contact with various forms of hydrazine. Dinitrogen tetroxide could be regarded as two nitro groups bonded together and it forms an equilibrium mixture with nitrogen dioxide. The molecule is planar with an N-N bond distance of 1.78 Å, the N-N distance corresponds to a weak bond, since it is significantly longer than the average N-N single bond length of 1.45 Å. Unlike NO2, N2O4 is diamagnetic since it has no unpaired electrons, inevitably, some dinitrogen tetroxide is a component of smog containing nitrogen dioxide. Nitrogen tetroxide is made by the oxidation of ammonia, steam is used as a diluent to reduce the combustion temperature. The gas is essentially pure nitrogen dioxide, which is condensed into dinitrogen tetroxide in a brine-cooled liquefier, dinitrogen tetroxide can also be made through the reaction of concentrated nitric acid and metallic copper. This synthesis is more practical in a setting and is commonly used as a demonstration or experiment in undergraduate chemistry labs. The unstable species further react to form nitrogen dioxide which is purified and condensed to form dinitrogen tetroxide. Nitrogen tetroxide is used as an oxidizer in one of the more important rocket propellants because it can be stored as a liquid at room temperature and it became the storable oxidizer of choice for many rockets in both the United States and USSR by the late 1950s. It is a propellant in combination with a hydrazine-based rocket fuel. One of the earliest uses of this combination was on the Titan family of rockets used originally as ICBMs and then as launch vehicles for many spacecraft. Used on the U. S. Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and also on the Space Shuttle, it continues to be used as stationkeeping propellant on most geo-stationary satellites, and many deep-space probes. It now seems likely that NASA will continue to use this oxidizer in the next-generation crew-vehicles which will replace the shuttle and it is also the primary oxidizer for Russias Proton rocket. When used as a propellant, dinitrogen tetroxide is usually referred to simply as Nitrogen Tetroxide, most spacecraft now use MON instead of NTO, for example, the Space Shuttle reaction control system used MON3. On 24 July 1975, NTO poisoning affected the three U. S. astronauts on board the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project during its final descent, one crew member lost consciousness during descent
8.
Solid rocket
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A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants. The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder, they were used in warfare by the Chinese, Indians, Mongols and Persians, all rockets used some form of solid or powdered propellant up until the 20th century, when liquid-propellant rockets offered more efficient and controllable alternatives. Solid rockets are used today in model rockets and on larger applications for their simplicity and reliability. Since solid-fuel rockets can remain in storage for periods, and then reliably launch on short notice. Solids are, however, frequently used as boosters to increase payload capacity or as spin-stabilized add-on upper stages when higher-than-normal velocities are required. Solid rockets are used as launch vehicles for low Earth orbit payloads under 2 tons or escape payloads up to 500 kilograms. A simple solid rocket motor consists of a casing, nozzle, grain, the grain behaves like a solid mass, burning in a predictable fashion and producing exhaust gases. The nozzle dimensions are calculated to maintain a design chamber pressure, once ignited, a simple solid rocket motor cannot be shut off, because it contains all the ingredients necessary for combustion within the chamber in which they are burned. More advanced solid rocket motors can not only be throttled but also be extinguished, also, pulsed rocket motors that burn in segments and that can be ignited upon command are available. Design begins with the total impulse required, which determines the fuel/oxidizer mass, grain geometry and chemistry are then chosen to satisfy the required motor characteristics. The following are chosen or solved simultaneously, the results are exact dimensions for grain, nozzle, and case geometries, The grain burns at a predictable rate, given its surface area and chamber pressure. The chamber pressure is determined by the orifice diameter and grain burn rate. Allowable chamber pressure is a function of casing design, the length of burn time is determined by the grain web thickness. The grain may or may not be bonded to the casing, case-bonded motors are more difficult to design, since the deformation of the case and the grain under flight must be compatible. Common modes of failure in rocket motors include fracture of the grain, failure of case bonding. All of these produce an increase in burn surface area and a corresponding increase in exhaust gas production rate and pressure. Another failure mode is casing seal failure, seals are required in casings that have to be opened to load the grain. Once a seal fails, hot gas will erode the escape path and this was the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
9.
Diamond
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Diamond is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at standard conditions. Diamond is renowned as a material with superlative physical qualities, most of which originate from the covalent bonding between its atoms. In particular, diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material and those properties determine the major industrial application of diamond in cutting and polishing tools and the scientific applications in diamond knives and diamond anvil cells. Because of its extremely rigid lattice, it can be contaminated by very few types of impurities, such as boron, small amounts of defects or impurities color diamond blue, yellow, brown, green, purple, pink, orange or red. Diamond also has relatively high optical dispersion, most natural diamonds are formed at high temperature and pressure at depths of 140 to 190 kilometers in the Earths mantle. Carbon-containing minerals provide the source, and the growth occurs over periods from 1 billion to 3.3 billion years. Diamonds are brought close to the Earths surface through deep volcanic eruptions by magma, Diamonds can also be produced synthetically in a HPHT method which approximately simulates the conditions in the Earths mantle. An alternative, and completely different growth technique is chemical vapor deposition, several non-diamond materials, which include cubic zirconia and silicon carbide and are often called diamond simulants, resemble diamond in appearance and many properties. Special gemological techniques have developed to distinguish natural diamonds, synthetic diamonds. The word is from the ancient Greek ἀδάμας – adámas unbreakable, the name diamond is derived from the ancient Greek αδάμας, proper, unalterable, unbreakable, untamed, from ἀ-, un- + δαμάω, I overpower, I tame. Diamonds have been known in India for at least 3,000 years, Diamonds have been treasured as gemstones since their use as religious icons in ancient India. Their usage in engraving tools also dates to early human history, later in 1797, the English chemist Smithson Tennant repeated and expanded that experiment. By demonstrating that burning diamond and graphite releases the same amount of gas, the most familiar uses of diamonds today are as gemstones used for adornment, a use which dates back into antiquity, and as industrial abrasives for cutting hard materials. The dispersion of light into spectral colors is the primary gemological characteristic of gem diamonds. In the 20th century, experts in gemology developed methods of grading diamonds, four characteristics, known informally as the four Cs, are now commonly used as the basic descriptors of diamonds, these are carat, cut, color, and clarity. A large, flawless diamond is known as a paragon and these conditions are met in two places on Earth, in the lithospheric mantle below relatively stable continental plates, and at the site of a meteorite strike. The conditions for diamond formation to happen in the mantle occur at considerable depth corresponding to the requirements of temperature and pressure
10.
Expendable launch system
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An expendable launch system is a launch system that uses an expendable launch vehicle to carry a payload into space. The vehicles used in launch systems are designed to be used only once. The vehicle typically consists of several stages, discarded one by one as the vehicle gains altitude. The ELV design differs from that of reusable systems, where the vehicle is launched and recovered more than once. Reuse might seem to make systems like the Space Shuttle more cost effective than ELVs, most satellites are currently launched using expendable launchers, they are perceived as having a low risk of mission failure, a short time to launch and a relatively low cost. Many orbital expendable launchers are derivatives of 1950s-era ballistic missiles, as such, cost was not a major consideration in their design. The largest of these is the Titan IV, the second costliest per-flight launch vehicle in history, on the other hand, a reusable launcher requires stronger parts and additional parts, thus decreasing payload capacity. The Space Shuttle was a national asset, used with great. Only five orbiters were built, and the loss of two cause great concern and a hiatus in Shuttle flights. Expendable launch failures usually caused a much shorter pause, each of which impacted only that model of launcher, for these reasons the Space Shuttle did not reduce the costs of constructing and launching payloads into orbit and did not replace expendable satellite launchers. On March 26,1980, the European Space Agency and the Centre National dEtudes Spatiales created Arianespace, Arianespace produces, operates and markets the Ariane launcher family. By 1995 Arianespace lofted its 100th satellite and by 1997 the Ariane rocket had its 100th launch, arianespaces 23 shareholders represent scientific, technical, financial and political entities from 10 different European countries. The major shareholder is the CNES, with 34. 68% of capital, at the start, NASA subsidized satellite launches, intending to eventually price Shuttle service for the commercial market at long-run marginal cost. On October 30,1984, United States President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Act and this enabled an American industry of private operators of expendable launch systems. Prior to the signing of this law, all commercial satellite launches in the United States were limited to NASAs Space Shuttle, on November 5,1990, United States President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Launch Services Purchase Act. The Russian government sold part of its stake in RSC Energia to private investors in 1994, Energia together with Khrunichev constituted most of the Russian manned space program. In 1997, the Russian government sold off enough of its share to lose the majority position, in 1996 the United States government selected Lockheed Martin and Boeing to each develop Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles to compete for launch contracts and provide assured access to space. The governments acquisition strategy relied on the commercial viability of both vehicles to lower unit costs
11.
Satellite
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In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an artificial object which has been intentionally placed into orbit. Such objects are called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as Earths Moon. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the worlds first artificial satellite, since then, about 6,600 satellites from more than 40 countries have been launched. According to a 2013 estimate,3,600 remained in orbit, of those, about 1,000 were operational, the rest have lived out their useful lives and become space debris. Approximately 500 operational satellites are in orbit,50 are in medium-Earth orbit. A few large satellites have been launched in parts and assembled in orbit. Over a dozen space probes have been placed into orbit around other bodies and become artificial satellites to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, a few asteroids, Satellites are used for many purposes. Common types include military and civilian Earth observation satellites, communications satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, Space stations and human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly, depending on the purpose of the satellite, well-known classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit, and geostationary orbit. A launch vehicle is a rocket that throws a satellite into orbit, usually it lifts off from a launch pad on land. Some are launched at sea from a submarine or a mobile maritime platform, Satellites are usually semi-independent computer-controlled systems. Satellite subsystems attend many tasks, such as power generation, thermal control, telemetry, attitude control, the first fictional depiction of a satellite being launched into orbit was a short story by Edward Everett Hale, The Brick Moon. The idea surfaced again in Jules Vernes The Begums Fortune, in 1903, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published Exploring Space Using Jet Propulsion Devices, which is the first academic treatise on the use of rocketry to launch spacecraft. He calculated the speed required for a minimal orbit. In 1928, Herman Potočnik published his book, The Problem of Space Travel — The Rocket Motor. He described the use of orbiting spacecraft for observation of the ground, in a 1945 Wireless World article, the English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke described in detail the possible use of communications satellites for mass communications. He suggested that three geostationary satellites would provide coverage over the entire planet, the first artificial satellite was Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4,1957, and initiating the Soviet Sputnik program, with Sergei Korolev as chief designer. This in turn triggered the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States, Sputnik 1 helped to identify the density of high atmospheric layers through measurement of its orbital change and provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere
12.
USSR
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
13.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
14.
CNES
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The Centre national détudes spatiales is the French government space agency. Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is under the supervision of the French Ministries of Defence and it operates from the Toulouse Space Center and Guiana Space Centre, but also has payloads launched from space centres operated by other countries. The president of CNES is Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES is member of Institute of Space, its Applications and Technologies. CNES benefits from the second largest national budget allocated to space, CNES was established under President Charles de Gaulle in 1961. CNES was responsible for the training of French astronauts, until the last active CNES astronauts transferred to the European Space Agency in 2001. As of January 2015, CNES is working with Germany and a few governments to start a modest research effort with the hope to propose a LOX/methane reusable launch vehicle by mid-2015. If built, flight testing would not start before approximately 2026. Hammaguir missile range built in Algeria,1963 Cats launched into space via Véronique rockets. 1965 First French satellite put in orbit,1969 French Guiana Space Centre completed. Commercial competition in space is fierce, so launch services must be tailored to space operators’ needs, the new versions of Ariane 5 can launch large satellites or perform dual launches while the Vega and Soyuz-2 are small and medium-lift launchers. CNES is taking part in the Galileo navigation programme alongside the European Union, in addition to Spot and the future Pleiades satellites, CNES is working for the defence community as prime contractor for the Helios satellites. France’s contribution to the International Space Station is giving French scientists the opportunity to perform experiments in microgravity. The CNES is studying formation flying, a technique whereby several satellites fly components of a much heavier, CNES is collaborating with other space agencies in a number of projects. Joint missions with NASA result in PARASOL and CALIPSO satellites, CNES plays a major role in the construction and operation of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite. In December 2006, CNES announced that it would publish its UFO archive online by late January or mid-February, most of the 6,000 reports have been filed by the public and airline professionals. Jacques Arnould, an official for the French Space Agency, said that the data had accumulated over a 30-year period and that they were often reported to the Gendarmerie. In the last two decades of the 20th century, France was the country whose government paid UFO investigators, employed by CNESs UFO section GEPAN, later known as SEPRA. On March 22,2007, CNES released its UFO files to the public through its website, the CNES has several tracking stations
15.
Gemstones
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A gemstone is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks or organic materials that are not minerals are used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well. Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals are used in jewelry because of their luster or other properties that have aesthetic value. Rarity is another characteristic that lends value to a gemstone, apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms. A gem maker is called a lapidary or gemcutter, a worker is a diamantaire. The carvings of Carl Fabergé are significant works in this tradition, the traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between precious and semi-precious, similar distinctions are made in other cultures. In modern usage the precious stones are diamond, ruby, sapphire, other stones are classified by their color, translucency and hardness. Another unscientific term for semi-precious gemstones used in art history and archaeology is hardstone, in modern times gemstones are identified by gemologists, who describe gems and their characteristics using technical terminology specific to the field of gemology. The first characteristic a gemologist uses to identify a gemstone is its chemical composition, for example, diamonds are made of carbon and rubies of aluminium oxide. Next, many gems are crystals which are classified by their crystal system such as cubic or trigonal or monoclinic, another term used is habit, the form the gem is usually found in. For example, diamonds, which have a crystal system, are often found as octahedrons. Gemstones are classified into different groups, species, and varieties, for example, ruby is the red variety of the species corundum, while any other color of corundum is considered sapphire. Other examples are the Emerald, aquamarine, red beryl, goshenite, heliodor, and morganite, gems are characterized in terms of refractive index, dispersion, specific gravity, hardness, cleavage, fracture, and luster. They may exhibit pleochroism or double refraction and they may have luminescence and a distinctive absorption spectrum. Material or flaws within a stone may be present as inclusions, gemstones may also be classified in terms of their water. This is a grading of the gems luster, transparency. Very transparent gems are considered first water, while second or third water gems are those of a lesser transparency, there is no universally accepted grading system for gemstones. Diamonds are graded using a system developed by the Gemological Institute of America in the early 1950s, historically, all gemstones were graded using the naked eye
16.
Agate
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Agate /ˈæɡət/ is a cryptocrystalline variety of silica, chiefly chalcedony, characterised by its fineness of grain and brightness of color. Although agates may be found in various kinds of rock, they are associated with volcanic rocks. Colorful agates and other chalcedonies were obtained over 3,000 years ago from the Achates River, Agate has also been known to fill veins or cracks in volcanic or altered rock underlain by granitic intrusive masses. Such agates, when cut transversely, exhibit a succession of lines, often of extreme tenuity. Such stones are known as banded agate, riband agate and striped agate, perhaps the most comprehensive review of agate chemistry is a recent text by Moxon cited below. This green silicate may give rise by alteration to a iron oxide. The outer surface of an agate, freed from its matrix, is pitted and rough. The first layer spread over the wall of the cavity has been called the priming, when the matrix in which the agates are embedded disintegrates, they are set free. The agates are extremely resistant to weathering and remain as nodules in the soil, or are deposited as gravel in streams, a Mexican agate, showing only a single eye, has received the name of cyclops agate. Dendritic agates have fern like patterns in them formed due to the presence of manganese, other types of included matter deposited during agate-building include sagenitic growths and chunks of entrapped detritus. Occasionally agate fills a void left by decomposed vegetative material such as a limb or root and is called limb cast agate due to its appearance. Enhydro agate contains tiny inclusions of water, sometimes with air bubbles, turritella agate is formed from silicified fossil Elimia tenera shells. E. tenera are spiral freshwater gastropods having elongated, spiral shells composed of many whorls, similarly, coral, petrified wood and other organic remains or porous rocks can also become agatized. Agatized coral is often referred to as Petoskey stone or agate, greek agate is a name given to pale white to tan colored agate found in Sicily back to 400 BC. The Greeks used it for making jewelry and beads, brazilian agate is found as sizable geodes of layered nodules. These occur in brownish tones interlayered with white and gray, quartz forms within these nodules, creating a striking specimen when cut opposite the layered growth axis. It is often dyed in various colors for ornamental purposes, certain stones, when examined in thin sections by transmitted light, show a diffraction spectrum due to the extreme delicacy of the successive bands, whence they are termed rainbow agates. Often agate coexists with layers or masses of opal, jasper or crystalline quartz due to ambient variations during the formation process, lace agate is a variety that exhibits a lace-like pattern with forms such as eyes, swirls, bands or zigzags
17.
Topaz
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Topaz is a silicate mineral of aluminium and fluorine with the chemical formula Al2SiO42. Topaz crystallizes in the system, and its crystals are mostly prismatic terminated by pyramidal. Pure topaz is colorless and transparent but is usually tinted by impurities, typical topaz is wine red, yellow, pale gray, reddish-orange and it can also be white, pale green, blue, gold, pink, reddish-yellow or opaque to transparent/translucent. Orange topaz, also known as precious topaz, is the traditional November birthstone, the symbol of friendship, Imperial topaz is yellow, pink or pink-orange. Brazilian Imperial Topaz can often have a yellow to deep golden brown hue. Many brown or pale topazes are treated to make them bright yellow, gold, some imperial topaz stones can fade on exposure to sunlight for an extended period of time. Blue topaz is the gemstone of the US state of Texas. Naturally occurring blue topaz is quite rare, typically, colorless, gray or pale yellow and blue material is heat treated and irradiated to produce a more desired darker blue. Mystic topaz is colorless topaz which has been artificially coated giving it the desired rainbow effect, Topaz is commonly associated with silicic igneous rocks of the granite and rhyolite type. It typically crystallizes in granitic pegmatites or in cavities in rhyolite lava flows including those at Topaz Mountain in western Utah. Brazil is one of the largest producers of topaz, some clear topaz crystals from Brazilian pegmatites can reach boulder size, crystals of this size may be seen in museum collections. The Topaz of Aurangzeb, observed by Jean Baptiste Tavernier weighed 157.75 carats, the American Golden Topaz, a more recent gem, weighed a massive 22,892.5 carats. Large, vivid blue topaz specimens from the St. Anns mine in Zimbabwe were found in the late 1980s, colorless and light-blue varieties of topaz are found in Precambrian granite in Mason County, Texas within the Llano Uplift. There is no mining of topaz in that area. Pliny said that Topazos is an island in the Red Sea. Alternatively, the word topaz may be related to the Sanskrit word तपस् tapas, nicols, the author of one of the first systematic treatises on minerals and gemstones, dedicated two chapters to the topic in 1652. In the Middle Ages, the name topaz was used to refer to any yellow gemstone, many modern English translations of the Bible, including the King James Version mention topaz. The masoretic text has pitdah as the gem the stone is made from, more likely, pitdah is derived from Sanskrit words, meaning yellow burn or, metaphorically, fiery
18.
Emerald
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Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7. 5–8 on the Mohs scale, most emeralds are highly included, so their toughness is classified as generally poor. The word emerald is derived, from Vulgar Latin, esmaralda/esmaraldus, a variant of Latin smaragdus, emeralds, like all colored gemstones, are graded using four basic parameters–the four Cs of Connoisseurship, Color, Clarity, Cut and Carat weight. Before the 20th century, jewelers used the water, as in a gem of the finest water. Normally, in the grading of colored gemstones, color is by far the most important criterion, however, in the grading of emeralds, clarity is considered a close second. A fine emerald must possess not only a pure verdant green hue as described below, in the 1960s, the American jewelry industry changed the definition of emerald to include the green vanadium-bearing beryl as emerald. As a result, vanadium emeralds purchased as emeralds in the United States are not recognized as such in the UK, in America, the distinction between traditional emeralds and the new vanadium kind is often reflected in the use of terms such as Colombian Emerald. In gemology, color is divided into three components, hue, saturation, and tone, emeralds occur in hues ranging from yellow-green to blue-green, with the primary hue necessarily being green. Yellow and blue are the normal secondary hues found in emeralds, only gems that are medium to dark in tone are considered emerald, light-toned gems are known instead by the species name green beryl. The finest emerald are approximately 75% tone on a scale where 0% tone would be colorless, in addition, a fine emerald should be well saturated and have a hue that is bright. Gray is the normal saturation modifier or mask found in emerald, Emerald tends to have numerous inclusions and surface breaking fissures. Unlike diamond, where the standard, i. e. 10× magnification, is used to grade clarity. Thus, if an emerald has no visible inclusions to the eye it is considered flawless, stones that lack surface breaking fissures are extremely rare and therefore almost all emeralds are treated to enhance the apparent clarity. The inclusions and fissures within an emerald are sometime described as jardin, imperfections are unique for each emerald and can be used to identify a particular stone. Eye-clean stones of a vivid primary green hue, with no more than 15% of any hue or combination of a medium-dark tone. The relative non-uniformity motivates the cutting of emeralds in cabochon form, faceted emeralds are most commonly given an oval cut, or the signature emerald cut, a rectangular cut with facets around the top edge. Most emeralds are oiled as part of the process, in order to fill in surface-reaching cracks so that clarity and stability are improved. Cedar oil, having a refractive index, is often used in this widely adopted practice
19.
Ruby
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A ruby is a pink to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapphires, Ruby is one of the traditional cardinal gems, together with amethyst, sapphire, emerald, and diamond. They word ruby comes from ruber, Latin for red, the color of a ruby is due to the element chromium. The quality of a ruby is determined by its color, cut, and clarity, the brightest and most valuable red called blood-red or pigeon blood, commands a large premium over other rubies of similar quality. After color follows clarity, similar to diamonds, a stone will command a premium. Ruby is the birthstone for July and is usually more pink than garnet. The worlds most expensive ruby is the Sunrise Ruby, rubies have a hardness of 9.0 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Among the natural gems only moissanite and diamond are harder, with diamond having a Mohs hardness of 10.0, when a chromium atom replaces an occasional aluminum atom, it too loses 3 electrons to become a chromium3+ ion to maintain the charge balance of the Al2O3 crystal. However, the Cr3+ ions are larger and have electron orbitals in different directions than aluminum, the octahedral arrangement of the O2− ions is distorted, and the energy levels of the different orbitals of those Cr3+ ions are slightly altered because of the directions to the O2− ions. Those energy differences correspond to absorption in the ultraviolet, violet, if one percent of the aluminum ions are replaced by chromium in ruby, the yellow-green absorption results in a red color for the gem. Additionally, absorption at any of the above wavelengths stimulates fluorescent emission of 694-nanometer-wavelength red light, after absorbing short-wavelength light, there is short interval of time when the crystal lattice of ruby is in an excited state before fluorescence occurs. If 694-nanometer photons pass through the crystal during that time, they can stimulate more fluorescent photons to be emitted in-phase with them, thus strengthening the intensity of that red light. By arranging mirrors or other means to pass emitted light repeatedly through the crystal, all natural rubies have imperfections in them, including color impurities and inclusions of rutile needles known as silk. Gemologists use these needle inclusions found in natural rubies to distinguish them from synthetics, simulants, usually, the rough stone is heated before cutting. These days, almost all rubies are treated in some form, untreated rubies of high quality command a large premium. Some rubies show a three-point or six-point asterism or star and these rubies are cut into cabochons to display the effect properly. Asterisms are best visible with a source and move across the stone as the light moves or the stone is rotated. Such effects occur when light is reflected off the silk in a certain way and this is one example where inclusions increase the value of a gemstone
20.
Sapphire
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Sapphire is a gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide. It is typically blue in color, but natural fancy sapphires also occur in yellow, purple, orange, the only color which sapphire cannot be is red - as red colored corundum is called ruby, another corundum variety. This variety in color is due to amounts of elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, copper. Commonly, natural sapphires are cut and polished into gemstones and worn in jewelry and they also may be created synthetically in laboratories for industrial or decorative purposes in large crystal boules. Sapphire is the birthstone for September and the gem of the 45th anniversary, a sapphire jubilee occurs after 65 years. Sapphire is one of the two gem-varieties of corundum, the other being ruby, although blue is the best-known sapphire color, they occur in other colors, including gray and black, and they can be colorless. A a pinkish orange variety of sapphire is called padparadscha, significant sapphire deposits are found in Eastern Australia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, Madagascar, East Africa, and in North America in a few locations, mostly in Montana. Sapphire and rubies are often found in the geological setting. Every sapphire mine produces a range of quality - and origin is not a guarantee of quality. For sapphire, Kashmir receives the highest premium although Burma, Sri Lanka, the cost of natural sapphires varies depending on their color, clarity, size, cut, and overall quality. For gems of exceptional quality, an independent determination from a respected laboratory such as the GIA, gemstone color can be described in terms of hue, saturation, and tone. Hue is commonly understood as the color of the gemstone, saturation refers to the vividness or brightness of the hue, and tone is the lightness to darkness of the hue. Blue sapphire exists in various mixtures of its primary and secondary hues, various tonal levels, blue sapphires are evaluated based upon the purity of their primary hue. Purple, violet, and green are the most common secondary hues found in blue sapphires, violet and purple can contribute to the overall beauty of the color, while green is considered to be distinctly negative. Blue sapphires with up to 15% violet or purple are generally said to be of fine quality, gray is the normal saturation modifier or mask found in blue sapphires. Gray reduces the saturation or brightness of the hue, and therefore has a negative effect. The 423-carat Logan sapphire in the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, sapphires in colors other than blue are called fancy or parti colored sapphires. Fancy sapphires are found in yellow, orange, green sapphires, brown, purple
21.
Maiden flight
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The maiden flight of an aircraft is the first occasion on which an aircraft leaves the ground under its own power. This is similar to a maiden voyage. The first flight of a new type is always a historic occasion for the type. In the early days of aviation it could be dangerous, because the exact handling characteristics of the aircraft were generally unknown, the first flight of a new type is almost invariably flown by a highly experienced test pilot. First flights are usually accompanied by a plane, to verify items like altitude, airspeed. A first flight is one stage in the development of an aircraft type. Unless the type is a research aircraft, the aircraft must be tested extensively to ensure that it delivers the desired performance with an acceptable margin of safety. In the case of aircraft, a new type must be certified by a governing agency before it can enter operation. An incomplete list of first flights of aircraft types, organized by date. October 23,1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont 14-bis flight, in Bagatelle park, Paris and he flew 5,080 feet, to win the Scientific American Trophy and its $2,500 purse. July 28,1935 – Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress – World War II American heavy bomber. December 17,1935 – Douglas DC-3 – propeller-driven passenger and cargo aircraft of more than 10,000 were produced December 29,1939 – Consolidated B-24 – World War II American heavy bomber. November 2,1947 – Hughes H-4 Hercules – only flight of this oversized flying boat, July 27,1949 – de Havilland Comet – first jet airliner. August 23,1954 – Lockheed C-130 Hercules – military transport plane, may 27,1955 – Sud Aviation Caravelle – first jet airliner with engines mounted in the tail. April 25,1962 – Lockheed A-12 Blackbird – supersonic reconnaissance plane, june 29,1962 – Vickers VC10 – first airliner with 4 engines mounted in the tail. April 9,1967 – Boeing 737 – short-to-medium-range airliner, october 4,1968 – Tupolev 154 – Soviet/Russian airliner, still in operation. December 31,1968 – Tupolev Tu-144 – Soviet supersonic airliner, february 9,1969 – Boeing 747 – first widebody airliner. March 2,1969 – Anglo-French Concorde – supersonic airliner, september 19,1969 – Mil Mi-24 – Russian/Soviet-made helicopter used by many countries to this day
22.
Rocket
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A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine. Rocket engine exhaust is formed entirely from propellant carried within the rocket before use, Rocket engines work by action and reaction and push rockets forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed, and can therefore work in the vacuum of space. In fact, rockets work more efficiently in space than in an atmosphere, multistage rockets are capable of attaining escape velocity from Earth and therefore can achieve unlimited maximum altitude. Compared with airbreathing engines, rockets are lightweight and powerful and capable of generating large accelerations. To control their flight, rockets rely on momentum, airfoils, auxiliary engines, gimballed thrust, momentum wheels, deflection of the exhaust stream, propellant flow, spin. Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th century China, significant scientific, interplanetary and industrial use did not occur until the 20th century, when rocketry was the enabling technology for the Space Age, including setting foot on the Earths moon. Rockets are now used for fireworks, weaponry, ejection seats, launch vehicles for satellites, human spaceflight. Chemical rockets are the most common type of high power rocket, chemical rockets store a large amount of energy in an easily released form, and can be very dangerous. However, careful design, testing, construction and use minimizes risks, the first gunpowder-powered rockets were developed in Song China, by the 13th century. The Chinese rocket technology was adopted by the Mongols and the invention was spread via the Mongol invasions to the Near East, medieval and early modern rockets were used militarily as incendiary weapons in sieges. An early Chinese text to mention the use of rockets was the Huolongjing, between 1270 and 1280, Hasan al-Rammah wrote al-furusiyyah wa al-manasib al-harbiyya, which included 107 gunpowder recipes,22 of which are for rockets. In Europe, Konrad Kyeser described rockets in his military treatise Bellifortis around 1405. The name Rocket comes from the Italian rocchetta, meaning bobbin or little spindle, the Italian term was adopted into German in the mid 16th century by Leonhard Fronsperger and Conrad Haas, and by the early 17th century into English. Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima, an important early work on rocket artillery. The first iron-cased rockets were developed in the late 18th century in the Kingdom of Mysore, in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the line rockets red glare while held captive on a British ship that was laying siege to Fort McHenry. The first mathematical treatment of the dynamics of rocket propulsion is due to William Moore, in 1815, Alexander Dmitrievich Zasyadko constructed rocket-launching platforms, which allowed rockets to be fired in salvos, and gun-laying devices. William Hale in 1844 greatly increased the accuracy of rocket artillery, the Congreve rocket was further improved by Edward Mounier Boxer in 1865. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first speculated on the possibility of manned spaceflight with rocket technology, robert Goddard in 1920 published proposed improvements to rocket technology in A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes
23.
Ariane (rocket)
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Ariane is a series of a European civilian expendable launch vehicles for space launch use. The name comes from the French spelling of the mythological character Ariadne, France first proposed the Ariane project and it was officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after discussions between France, Germany and the UK. The project was Western Europes second attempt to develop its own following the unsuccessful Europa project. The Ariane project was code-named L3S, Arianespace launches Ariane rockets from the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in French Guiana. Ariane 1 was a launcher, derived from missile technology. Arianes 2 through 4 are enhancements of the basic vehicle, the major differences are improved versions of the engines, allowing stretched first- and third-stage tanks and greater payloads. The largest versions can launch two satellites, mounted in the SPELDA adapter, such later versions are often seen with strap-on boosters. These layouts are designated by suffixes after the generation number, first is the total number of boosters, then letters designating liquid- or solid-fueled stages. For example, an Ariane 42P is an Ariane 4 with two solid-fuel boosters, an Ariane 44LP has two solid, two liquid boosters, and a 44L has four liquid-fuel boosters. Ariane 5 is a complete redesign. The two storable lower stages are replaced with a single, cryogenic core stage and this simplifies the stack, along with the use of a single core engine. Because the core cannot lift its own weight, two solid-fuel boosters are strapped to the sides, the boosters can be recovered for examination, but are not reused. The upper stage is storable and restartable, powered by a single Aestus engine, on 4 May 2007, an Ariane 5-ECA rocket set a new commercial payload record, lifting two satellites with a combined mass of 9.4 tonnes. By January 2006,169 Ariane flights had boosted 290 satellites, attesting to the ubiquity of Ariane launch vehicles, Frances Cerise satellite, which was orbited by an Ariane in 1995, struck a discarded Ariane rocket stage in 1996. The incident marked the first verified case of a collision with a piece of catalogued space debris, on February 16,2011, the 200th Ariane rocket was launched, successfully carrying the Johannes Kepler ATV into low Earth orbit. Flyable models of the Ariane 4 and 5 are available as kits from Noris Raketen in Germany, Ariane 5 scale models are offered French Heller Joustra S. A in 1/125 scale, Arianespace in 1/125 and 1/100 scale, and Dragon Models Limited in 1/400 scale. ESA links to several models on its website, including Ariane 4. In 1987 Lambert Shelter built a 5.40 metre long flyable model of the Ariane, now displayed at the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht
24.
Missile
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In modern language, a missile is a self-propelled precision-guided munition system, as opposed to an unguided self-propelled munition, referred to as a rocket. Missiles have four components, targeting or missile guidance, flight system, engine. Missiles come in types adapted for different purposes, surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, all known existing missiles are designed to be propelled during powered flight by chemical reactions inside a rocket engine, jet engine, or other type of engine. Non-self-propelled airborne explosive devices are referred to as shells and usually have a shorter range than missiles. In ordinary British-English usage predating guided weapons, a missile is any thrown object, the word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning to send. In military usage, munitions projected towards a target are broadly categorised as follows, a powered, unguided munition is known as a rocket. Unpowered munitions not fired from a gun are called bombs whether guided or not, munitions that are fired from a gun are known as projectiles whether guided or not. If explosive, they are more specifically as shells or mortar bombs. Powered munitions that travel through water are called torpedoes, hand grenades are not usually classed as missiles. The first missiles to be used operationally were a series of missiles developed by Nazi Germany in World War II, most famous of these are the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, both of which used a simple mechanical autopilot to keep the missile flying along a pre-chosen route. Less well known were a series of anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles, however, these early systems in World War II were only built in small numbers. Guided missiles have a number of different system components, Targeting or missile guidance Flight system Engine Warhead Missiles may be targeted in a number of ways. The most common method is to use some form of radiation, such as infrared, lasers or radio waves and this radiation may emanate from the target, it may be provided by the missile itself, or it may be provided by a friendly third party. The first two are known as fire-and-forget as they need no further support or control from the launch vehicle/platform in order to function. Another method is to use a TV guidance—using either visible light or infrared—in order to see the target, the picture may be used either by a human operator who steers the missile onto its target or by a computer doing much the same job. One of the more bizarre guidance methods instead used a pigeon to steer the missile to its target, many missiles use a combination of two or more of the above methods to improve accuracy and the chances of a successful engagement. Another method is to target the missile by knowing the location of the target and using a system such as INS. This guidance system guides the missile by knowing the current position and the position of the target
25.
Ballistic missile
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A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a ballistic trajectory with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. A ballistic missile is only guided during relatively brief periods of flight and this contrasts to a cruise missile, which is aerodynamically guided in powered flight. Long range intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched on a flight trajectory. Shorter range ballistic missiles stay within the Earths atmosphere, the earliest use of rockets as a weapon date to the 13th Century. A pioneer ballistic missile was the A-4, commonly known as the V-2 rocket developed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s under the direction of Wernher von Braun. The first successful launch of a V-2 was on October 3,1942, by the end of World War II in May 1945, over 3,000 V-2s had been launched. The R-7 Semyorka was the first intercontinental ballistic missile, a total of 30 nations have deployed operational ballistic missiles. Development continues with around 100 ballistic missile tests in 2007, mostly by China, Iran. In 2010, the U. S. and Russian governments signed a treaty to reduce their inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles over a period to 1550 units each. Ballistic missiles can be launched from fixed sites or mobile launchers, including vehicles, aircraft, ships, the powered flight portion can last from a few tenths of seconds to several minutes and can consist of multiple rocket stages. When in space and no more thrust is provided, the missile enters free-flight, the re-entry stage begins at an altitude where atmospheric drag plays a significant part in missile trajectory, and lasts until missile impact. The course taken by ballistic missiles has two significant desirable properties, first, ballistic missiles that fly above the atmosphere have a much longer range than would be possible for cruise missiles of the same size. Powered rocket flight through thousands of kilometers of air would require greater amounts of fuel, making the launch vehicles larger and easier to detect. Powered missiles that can cover similar ranges, such as missiles, do not use rocket motors for the majority of their flight. Despite this, cruise missiles have not made ballistic missiles obsolete, due to the major advantage. An ICBM can strike a target within a 10,000 km range in about 30 to 35 minutes, with terminal speeds of over 5,000 m/s, ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than cruise missiles, due to the much shorter time available to intercept them. This is why ballistic missiles are some of the most feared weapons available, despite the fact that cruise missiles are cheaper, more mobile, Ballistic missiles can vary widely in range and use, and are often divided into categories based on range. A comparable missile would be the decommissioned Chinas JL-1 SLBM with a range of less than 2, tactical, short- and medium-range missiles are often collectively referred to as tactical and theatre ballistic missiles, respectively
26.
Superpower
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Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterised by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined-means of technological, cultural, military and economic strength, as well as international relations. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers, the term was first applied to the British Empire, the United States, and the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, There have been many attempts by historians to apply the term superpower to a variety of past entities. However, since even the most powerful empires of old had little to no means to exert influence over very long distances, no agreed definition of what is a superpower exists, and may differ between sources. This was because the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union had proved themselves to be capable of casting great influence in global politics and military dominance. The term in its current political meaning was coined by Dutch-American geostrategist Nicholas Spykman in a series of lectures in 1943 about the shape of a new post-war world order. A year later, in 1944, William T. R, according to him, there were three states that were superpowers, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union. According to Lyman Miller, The basic components of superpower stature may be measured along four axes of power, military, economic, political, although, many modifications may be made to this basic definition. According to Professor June Teufel Dreyer, A superpower must be able to project its power, soft and hard, in his book, Superpower, Three Choices for Americas Role in the World, Dr. There have been attempts by historians to apply the term superpower retrospectively. Recognition by historians of these states as superpowers may focus on various superlative traits exhibited by them. The two countries opposed each other ideologically, politically, militarily, and economically, the Soviet Union promoted the ideology of communism, planned economy and a one-party state, whilst the United States promoted the ideologies of liberal democracy and the free market. This was reflected in the Warsaw Pact and NATO military alliances, respectively and these alliances implied that these two nations were part of an emerging bipolar world, in contrast with a previously multipolar world. Additionally, much of the conflict between the superpowers was fought in wars, which more often than not involved issues more complex than the standard Cold War oppositions. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, the term began to be applied to the United States. This term, popularized by French foreign minister Hubert Védrine in the late 1990s, is controversial, one notable opponent to this theory, Samuel P. Huntington, rejects this theory in favor of a multipolar balance of power. In 1999, Samuel P. However, he rejected the claim that the world was unipolar, but that does not mean that the world is unipolar, describing it instead as a strange hybrid, a uni-multipolar system with one superpower and several major powers
27.
United States of America
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
28.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
29.
Space race
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The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, the Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon. The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4,1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, the race peaked with the July 20,1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed manned lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them, the Space Race has left a legacy of Earth communications and weather satellites, and continuing human space presence on the International Space Station. It has also sparked increases in spending on education and research and development, the origins of the Space Race can be traced to Germany, beginning in the 1930s and continuing during World War II when Nazi Germany researched and built operational ballistic missiles. Wernher von Braun, a young engineering prodigy, was recruited by Becker and Dornberger to join their secret army program at Kummersdorf-West in 1932, von Braun dreamed of conquering outer space with rockets, and did not initially see the military value in missile technology. They led the team built the Aggregate-4 rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943. By 1943, Germany began mass-producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 and its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and radar detection provided little warning. Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945, after the war, the V-2 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs. The United States also acquired a number of complete V2 rockets. The German rocket center in Peenemünde was located in the part of Germany. On Stalins orders, the Soviet Union sent its best rocket engineers to this region to see what they could salvage for future weapons systems, the Soviet rocket engineers were led by Sergei Korolev. He had been involved in clubs and early Soviet rocket design in the 1930s. After the war, he became the USSRs chief rocket and spacecraft engineer and his identity was kept a state secret throughout the Cold War, and he was identified publicly only as the Chief Designer. In the West, his name was officially revealed when he died in 1966. They were not allowed to participate in final Soviet missile design, with their help, particularly Helmut Gröttrups group, Korolev reverse-engineered the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1, in 1948. Later, he developed his own designs, though many of these designs were influenced by the Gröttrup Groups G4-R10 design from 1949. The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951–53 and he also started developing liquid-fueled rockets in 1921, yet he had not been taken seriously by the public
30.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
31.
V-2 rocket
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The V-2, technical name Aggregat 4, was the worlds first long-range guided ballistic missile. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to cross the boundary of space with the launch of MW18014 on 20 June 1944. Research into military use of long range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army, a series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. As Germany collapsed, teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, Wernher von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans. Eventually, many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal, the US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, in the late 1920s, a young Wernher von Braun bought a copy of Hermann Oberths book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen. Starting in 1930, he attended the Technical University of Berlin, von Braun was working on his doctorate when the Nazi Party gained power in Germany. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, von Brauns thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket, was kept classified by the German Army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had launched two rockets that reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km. At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddards research, before 1939, German engineers and scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddards plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the Aggregat series of rockets, during 28–30 September 1939, Der Tag der Weisheit conference met at Peenemünde to initiate the funding of university research to solve rocket problems. By late 1941, the Army Research Center at Peenemünde possessed the essential to the success of the A-4. The four key technologies for the A-4 were large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopic guidance, at the time, Adolf Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2, he pointed out that it was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost. Hitler was sufficiently impressed by the enthusiasm of its developers, and needed a weapon to maintain German morale. The V-2s were constructed at the Mittelwerk site by prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora, the A-4 used a 74% ethanol/water mixture for fuel and liquid oxygen for oxidizer. The rocket reached a height of 80 km after shutting off the engine, the fuel and oxidizer pumps were driven by a steam turbine, and the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen peroxide with sodium permanganate catalyst. Both the alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminium-magnesium alloy, the combustion burner reached a temperature of 2,500 to 2,700 °C
32.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
33.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
34.
Black Knight (rocket)
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Black Knight was a British research ballistic missile, originally developed to test and verify the design of a re-entry vehicle for the Blue Streak missile. It holds the distinction of being the United Kingdoms first indigenous expendable launch project, design work on what would become the Black Knight launch vehicle commenced in 1955, being performed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment and British manufacturer Saunders-Roe. Saunders-Roe was the manufacturer for the Black Knight at its facility on the Isle of Wight. On 7 September 1958, the first Black Knight was launched at Woomera in Australia, between 1958 and 1965, a total of 22 launch vehicles were fired, none of which having suffered any major failures. After 22 launches, the Black Knight programme came to a close, technology and experience gained on the Black Knight programme would contribute to the subsequent Black Arrow expendable launch vehicle programme. Thus, in 1955, the Black Knight research vehicle has its inception for this purpose, in 1955, due to its close relationship with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, the British government awarded a contract to British manufacturer Saunders-Roe to produce the Black Knight. According to author C. N Hill, the Black Knight programme ultimately fulfilled its prime objective of gathering information on rocket systems. Specifically, it influenced the development of the British-built Blue Streak missile programme, the Black Knight was regarded as being a successful programme, having produced a relatively low cost and reliable rocket. The Royal Aircraft Establishment had been encouraged by its performance and were keen to reuse the rocket elsewhere, one of more radical ideas for reusing the Black Knight was voiced by Armstrong-Siddeley, who suggested that the rocket be repurposed as the foundations for an intermediate-range ballistic missile. This proposal would have involved greatly increasing the size of the vehicle itself, the RAE performed a multitude of studies on the subject of prospective derivatives of the Black Knight and its Gamma engine. An alternative solution for satellite launches was explored by the RAE, while this implementation was found to be simple and low-cost to develop, the payload capacity remained low. This envisioned more powerful Black Knight rocket was to have used as part of a further set of planned experiments. Upon review, HM Treasury refused provide any funding for further Black Knight projects, the Black Knight was a single stage ballistic missile, complete with a separate nose section. The vehicle was 35 feet long, had a 3 foot diameter, in operation, the Black Knight could attain an altitude of up to 600 miles, and achieve a re-entry velocity of 12,000 feet per second. The Black Knight was powered by the Bristol Siddeley Gamma rocket engines, the Gamma engine was designed and manufactured by Armstrong-Siddeley at their factory in Ansty, near Coventry. Between 1956 and 1959, the Gamma rocket engines underwent testing at the High Down Rocket Test Site under the direction of under Paul Leyton.53 rocket propelled interceptor aircraft. During 1957, the first test launch of the Black Knight rocket was performed at High Down on the Isle of Wight. The first two vehicles were used as proving rounds - that is, launches which lacked any payload in order to test
35.
Blue Steel (missile)
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The Avro Blue Steel was a British air-launched, rocket-propelled nuclear armed standoff missile, built to arm the V bomber force. It allowed the bomber to launch the missile against its target while still outside the range of surface-to-air missiles, the missile proceeded to the target at high speeds up to Mach 3, and would trigger within 100 m of the pre-defined target point. Blue Steel entered service in 1963, by which point improved SAMs with longer range had greatly eroded the advantages of the design, a longer-range version, Blue Steel II, was considered, but cancelled in favour of the much longer-range GAM-87 Skybolt system from the US. When development of system was cancelled in 1962 the V-bomber fleet was considered highly vulnerable. Blue Steel remained the primary British nuclear deterrent weapon until the Royal Navy started operating Polaris ballistic missiles from Resolution-class submarines, the answer was for a rocket-powered, supersonic missile capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead with a range of at least 50 mi. This would keep the bombers out of range of Soviet ground-based defences installed around the target area, allowing the warhead to dash in at high speed. There would have to be a balance between the size of the warhead, the need for it to be carried by any of the three V-bomber types in use, and that it should be able to reach Mach 3. At the time the only strategic warheads available in the UK were the Orange Herald and Green Bamboo, the Air Staff issued this requirement for a stand-off bomb as OR.1132 in September 1954. Avro began work proper in 1955, with the assigned Rainbow Code name of Blue Steel which it would keep in service, with Elliots working on the guidance system Armstrong Siddeley would develop the liquid fuel engine. The large girth of Blue Steel was determined by the 45 inches implosion sphere diameter of Green Bamboo, Avro proposed that Blue Steel would evolve over time, subsequent versions increasing speed and range. The ultimate Blue Steel would be a 900 nmi range weapon that could be launched by the supersonic Avro 730 under development and they were told to limit themselves to the specification of OR.1132. The project was delayed by the need to develop the stainless steel fabrication techniques, Elliots guidance system was plagued by accuracy problems delaying test flights. Red Snow was smaller and lighter than the earlier warhead proposals, the missile was fitted with a state-of-the-art inertial navigation unit. This system allowed the missile to strike within 100 metres of its designated target, Blue Steel emerged as a pilotless, winged aircraft roughly the size of the experimental Saunders-Roe SR.53 interceptor, with clipped delta wings and small canard foreplanes. It was powered by a two-chamber Armstrong Siddeley Stentor Mark 101 rocket engine, burning a combination of hydrogen peroxide, the fuel was a considerable operational problem, because fuelling the missile before launch took nearly half an hour, and was quite hazardous. It required the site to be flooded with water. Another issue was the small ground clearance when attached to the Handley Page Victor. On launch the rocket engines first chamber developing 24,000 lbf thrust would power the missile along a course to the target at around Mach 1.5
36.
Vernon, Eure
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Vernon is a commune in the department of Eure in the Normandy region in northern France. It lies on the banks of the Seine River, about midway between Paris and Rouen, the city is well known for its production of engines by the SNECMA group. The village gave its name to a family who took part to the Norman Conquest of England,750 - First mention of name Vernon by Pepin the Short. 1070 - Birth of Saint Adjutor,1153 - Vernon is besieged by king Louis VII. 1196 - Vernon is joined to the domain by King Philip II Augustus. 1204 - Building of the Vernon Castle 1227 - Saint-Louis comes to Vernon,1449 - Vernon passes to France. 1596 -8 October, Henry IV visits the Bizy Castle,1600 - Construction of the Vieux-Moulin. 1606 - Henry IV creates a school,1723 - Creation of the lAvenue des Capucins. 1789 - Thomas Jefferson, his family, and Sally and James Hemings stop at Vernon on their way to Le Havre to return to America,1804 - Vernonnet is attached to Vernon. 1810 - Napoleon I comes to Vernon,1843 - Arrival of the railroad Paris-Rouen-Le Havre. 1858 - Building of the Saint-Louis Hospital,1860 - Highworks urbanism in the center by Suchet dAlbuféra. 1862 - Building of the library,1895 - Inauguration of the new cityhall by Adolphe Barette. 1897 - First cinema show at the Theatre from Vernon,1910 - The Seine river overfloods the city. 1946 - Arrival of 28 German scientists from Pennemünde to develop French rockets,1951 - First attempt to launch a Veronique-rocket 1955 - Inauguration of the Clemenceau Bridge. 1966 - Building of the Georges Dumézil highschool,1983 - First edition of the Foire aux Cerises. 1988 -18 October, visit from François Mitterrand,1992 - Building of the Espace Culturel Philippe Auguste. 1996 -30 June, visit from Hillary Clinton,2004 -16 January, visit from Jean-Louis Borloo. 2004 -29 January, visit from Alain Lambert,2006 -26 January, visit from Nicolas Sarkozy 2007 -18 September, visit from Sharon Stone
37.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
38.
Charles de Gaulle
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Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman. He was the leader of Free France and the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, in 1958, he founded the Fifth Republic and was elected as the 18th President of France, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. He was the dominant figure of France during the Cold War era, born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1912. He was an officer of the First World War, wounded several times. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions, during the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured division which counterattacked the invaders, he was then appointed Under-Secretary for War. Refusing to accept his governments armistice with Nazi Germany, de Gaulle exhorted the French population to resist occupation and he led a government in exile and the Free French Forces against the Axis. Despite frosty relations with Britain and especially the United States, he emerged as the leader of the French resistance. He became Head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic in June 1944, frustrated by the return of petty partisanship in the new Fourth Republic, he resigned in early 1946 but continued to be politically active as founder of the RPF party. He retired in the early 1950s and wrote his War Memoirs, when the Algerian War was ripping apart the unstable Fourth Republic, the National Assembly brought him back to power during the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic with a presidency. He granted independence to Algeria and progressively to other French colonies and he restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a European counterweight between the Anglo-American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring a Europe of sovereign nations, De Gaulle openly criticised the US intervention in Vietnam and the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar. In his later years, his support for an independent Quebec, De Gaulle resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed more decentralization. He died a year later at his residence in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, leaving his Presidential memoirs unfinished, many French political parties and figures claim the Gaullist legacy. De Gaulle was ranked as Le Plus Grand Français de tous les temps, De Gaulle was born in the industrial region of Lille in the Nord departement, the third of five children. He was raised in a devoutly Catholic and traditional family and his father, Henri de Gaulle, was a professor of history and literature at a Jesuit college who eventually founded his own school. Henri de Gaulle came from a line of parliamentary gentry from Normandy and Burgundy. De Gaulles mother, Jeanne, descended from a family of entrepreneurs from Lille
39.
President of France
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The President of the French Republic, is the executive head of state of the French Fifth Republic. The powers, functions and duties of prior presidential offices, and their relation with the prime minister, the current President of France is François Hollande, who took office on 15 May 2012. Hollande has announced that he stand down in the upcoming 2017 French presidential election. President Chirac was first elected in 1995 and again in 2002, at that time, there was no limit on the number of terms, so Chirac could have run again, but chose not to. He was succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy on 16 May 2007, following a further change, the Constitutional law on the Modernisation of the Institutions of the Fifth Republic,2008, a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac are the only Presidents to date who have served a two terms. In order to be admitted as a candidate, potential candidates must receive signed nominations from more than 500 elected officials. These officials must be from at least 30 départements or overseas collectivities, furthermore, each official may nominate only one candidate. There are exactly 45,543 elected officials, including 33,872 mayors, spending and financing of campaigns and political parties are highly regulated. There is a cap on spending, at approximately 20 million euros, if the candidate receives less than 5% of the vote, the government funds €8,000,000 to the party. Advertising on TV is forbidden but official time is given to candidates on public TV, an independent agency regulates election and party financing. After the president is elected, he or she goes through an investiture ceremony called a passation des pouvoirs. The French Fifth Republic is a semi-presidential system, unlike many other European presidents, the French President is quite powerful. The president holds the nations most senior office, and outranks all other politicians, the presidents greatest power is his/her ability to choose the prime minister. When the majority of the Assembly has opposite political views to that of the president, when the majority of the Assembly sides with them, the President can take a more active role and may, in effect, direct government policy. The prime minister is then the choice of the President. This device has been used in recent years by François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, since 2002, the mandate of the president and the Assembly are both 5 years and the two elections are close to each other. Therefore, the likelihood of a cohabitation is lower, among the powers of the government, The president promulgates laws
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French Fifth Republic
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The Fifth Republic, Frances current republican system of government, was established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958. De Gaulle, who was the first president elected under the Fifth Republic in December 1958, believed in a head of state. The Fifth Republic is Frances third-longest political regime, after the hereditary and feudal monarchies of the Ancien Régime, the trigger for the collapse of the French Fourth Republic was the Algiers crisis of 1958. France was still a power, although conflict and revolt had begun the process of decolonization. French West Africa, French Indochina, and French Algeria still sent representatives to the French parliament under systems of limited suffrage in the French Union, Algeria in particular, despite being the colony with the largest French population, saw rising pressure for separation from the Metropole. The situation was complicated by those in Algeria, such as white settlers, the Algerian War was not just a separatist movement but had elements of a civil war. Further complications came when a section of the French Army rebelled, Charles de Gaulle, who had retired from politics a decade before, placed himself in the midst of the crisis, calling on the nation to suspend the government and create a new constitutional system. The Fourth Republic suffered from a lack of consensus, a weak executive. With no party or coalition able to sustain a parliamentary majority, De Gaulle and his supporters proposed a system of strong presidents elected for seven-year terms. The President under the constitution would have executive powers to run the country in consultation with a prime minister whom he would appoint. These plans were approved by more than 80% of those who voted in the referendum of 28 September 1958, the new constitution was signed into law on 4 October 1958. Since each new constitution established a new republic, France moved from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic, the new constitution contained transitional clauses extending the period of rule by decree until the new institutions were operating. René Coty remained President of the Republic until the new president was proclaimed, on 21 December 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected President of France by an electoral college. The provisional constitutional commission, acting in lieu of the Constitutional Council, the new president began his office on that date, appointing Michel Debré as Prime Minister. The 1958 constitution also replaced the French Union with the French Community,1960 became known as the Year of Africa because of this wave of newly independent states. Algeria became independent on 5 July 1962, the president was initially elected by an electoral college, but in 1962 de Gaulle proposed that the president be directly elected by the citizens, and held a referendum on the change. Although the method and intent of de Gaulle in that referendum were contested by most political groups except for the Gaullists, the Constitutional Council declined to rule on the constitutionality of the referendum. Two major changes occurred in the 1970s regarding constitutional checks and balances, traditionally, France operated according to parliamentary supremacy, no authority was empowered to rule on whether statutes passed by Parliament respected the constitutional rights of the citizens
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Force de dissuasion
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The French Nuclear Force, part of the Armed Forces of France, is the third largest nuclear-weapons force in the world, following the nuclear triads of the Russian Federation and the United States. France has deactivated all land-based nuclear missiles, on 27 January 1996, France conducted its last nuclear test before signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in September 1996. In addition to its nuclear programme, France has a large peaceful nuclear programme. The decision to arm France with nuclear weapons was made in 1954 by the administration of Pierre Mendès-France under the Fourth Republic, according to de Gaulle, France should never trust its defense and therefore its very existence to a foreign and thus unreliable protector. The strategic concept behind the Force de Frappe is one of countervalue, I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is if there were 800 million French. General Pierre Marie Gallois said Making the most pessimistic assumptions, the French nuclear bombers could destroy ten Russian cities, whatever your defenses, you shant prevent at least some of my missiles from reaching your home and causing the devastation that you are familiar with. So, renounce your endeavour and let us remain good friends, certainly Frances position in the 1960s and 70s required some changes in posture. After the French withdrawal from the command structure of NATO to pursue their own defense systems. As a result statements of nuclear policy spoke of a confrontation with Russia directly and without allied support, perhaps the most significant difference in French strategy is that it includes the option of a first strike attack even in response to non-nuclear provocation. France carried out its first test of a bomb in Algeria in 1960. Then, France executed its first test of the more powerful hydrogen bomb over its South Pacific Ocean test range in 1968. President de Gaulles vision of the Force de Frappe featured the same triad of air-based, land-based and sea-based weapons deployed by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Work on these components had started in the late 1950s and was accelerated as soon as de Gaulle became the President of France. Initially, the Force de Frappe consisted of a component of the Strategic Air Forces Command of the French Air Force, established in 1955. These were considered marginal for a strategic role and work began almost immediately on a replacement resulting in the Mirage III. It has been modernized since then and converted to carry its successor the AN-22 bomb, the Mirage IV-P version was later armed with the ASMP missile and entered service in 1986. All bomber versions of the Mirage IV retired in 1996, from 1973 until 2003 the CFAS also operated SEPECAT Jaguars which were limited nuclear capable by using the tactical AN-52 nuclear bomb which were certified for supersonic flight. A total of 100 were built between 1972-1982 and they were compatible with modified Mirage III fighters and later with the standard Jaguar
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Sputnik crisis
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The crisis was a key event in the early Cold War that triggered the creation of NASA and Space Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4,1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the term was coined by then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The United States was the dominant world power in the early 1950s, lockheed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability. The launch and orbit of Sputnik 1 suggested that the USSR had made a leap forward in technology. This spurred the United States to make substantial investments in research and development, education. The Juno I rocket that carried the first US satellite Explorer 1 had been ready to launch in 1956, the Armys PGM-19 Jupiter from which Juno was derived had been mothballed on the orders of defense secretary Charles Erwin Wilson amid interservice rivalry with the US Air Forces PGM-17 Thor. The USSR used ICBM technology to launch Sputnik into space and this essentially gave the Soviets two propaganda victories at once. This proved that the Soviets had rockets capable of sending nuclear weapons from Russia to Western Europe and this was the most immediate threat that the launch of Sputnik 1 posed. The United States, a land with a history of security from European wars. A contributing factor to the Sputnik Crisis was that the Soviets had not released a photograph of the satellite for five days after the launch, until this point, its appearance remained a mystery to Americans. Another factor was Sputniks weight of 184 pounds which dwarfed the United States plans to launch a satellite of 21.5 pounds, the Soviet claim seemed outrageous to many American officials who doubted its accuracy. US rockets at the time produced 150,000 pounds-force of thrust, in fact, the R-7 rocket that launched Sputnik 1 into space produced almost 1,000,000 pounds-force of thrust. All these factors contributed to the American peoples perception that they were greatly behind the Soviets in the development of space technologies, hours after the launch, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Astronomy Department rigged an ad-hoc interferometer to measure signals from the satellite. Gillies and Jim Snyder programmed the ILLIAC I computer to calculate the orbit from this data. The programming and calculation was completed in less than two days, the rapid publication of the ephemeris in the journal Nature within a month of the satellite launch helped to dispel some of the fear created by the Sputnik launch. It also lent credence to the idea that the Sputnik launch was part of an organized effort to dominate space. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, the Soviets had demonstrated this capability on 21 August with a 6, 000-kilometer test flight of the R-7 booster. The event was announced by TASS five days later and was reported in other media
