The de Havilland Propellers Blue Streak was a British Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), and later the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle. Blue Streak was cancelled without entering full production.
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than 5,500 kilometres (3,400 mi), primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery. Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons can also be delivered with varying effectiveness, but have never been deployed on ICBMs. Most modern designs support multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRVs), allowing a single missile to carry several warheads, each of which can strike a different target. The United States, Russia, China, France, India, the United Kingdom, Israel, and North Korea are the only countries known to have operational ICBMs.
The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by the Convair Division of General Dynamics at an assembly plant located in Kearny Mesa, San Diego.
The RM-81 Agena was an American rocket upper stage and satellite bus which was developed by Lockheed Corporation initially for the canceled WS-117L reconnaissance satellite program. Following the division of WS-117L into SAMOS and Corona for image intelligence, and MIDAS for early warning, the Agena was later used as an upper stage, and an integrated component, for several programs, including Corona reconnaissance satellites and the Agena Target Vehicle used to demonstrate rendezvous and docking during Project Gemini. It was used as an upper stage on the Atlas, Thor, Thorad and Titan IIIB rockets, and considered for others including the Space Shuttle and Atlas V. A total of 365 Agena rockets were launched between February 28, 1959 and February 1987. Only 33 Agenas carried NASA payloads and the vast majority were for DoD programs.
A Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) is a warhead delivery system that uses a low Earth orbit towards its target destination. Just before reaching the target, it deorbits through a retrograde engine burn.
Space warfare is combat in which one or more belligerents are in outer space. The scope of space warfare includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth; space-to-space warfare, such as satellites attacking satellites; and space-to-ground warfare, such as satellites attacking Earth-based targets. Space warfare in fiction is thus sub-genre and theme of science fiction, where it is portrayed with a range of realism and plausibility. In the real world, international treaties are in place that attempt to regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of space weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.
Not This August, also known as Christmas Eve, is a Hugo Award shortlisted science fiction novel by Cyril M. Kornbluth. It was originally published in 1955 by Doubleday. It was serialized in Maclean's magazine (Canada) in May and June 1955. A revised edition with a new foreword and afterword by Frederik Pohl was published in 1981 by Tor Books, ISBN 0-523-48518-2. The title comes from author Ernest Hemingway's "Notes on the Next War".
Men Into Space is an American black-and-white science fiction television series, produced by Ziv Television Programs, Inc., that was first broadcast by CBS from September 30, 1959, to September 7, 1960. The series depicts future efforts by the United States Air Force to explore and develop outer space. The series' star, William Lundigan, played Col. Edward McCauley.
Vemork is a hydroelectric power plant outside the town of Rjukan in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The plant was built by Norsk Hydro and opened in 1911, its main purpose being to fix nitrogen for the production of fertilizer. At opening, it was the world's largest power plant with a capacity of 108 megawatts (145,000 hp).
Space weapons are weapons used in space warfare. They include weapons that can attack space systems in orbit, attack targets on the earth from space or disable missiles travelling through space. In the course of the militarisation of space, such weapons were developed mainly by the contesting superpowers during the Cold War, and some remain under development today. Space weapons are also a central theme in military science fiction and sci-fi video games.
The militarisation of space involves the placement and development of weaponry and military technology in outer space. The early exploration of space in the mid-20th century had, in part, a military motivation, as the United States and the Soviet Union used it as an opportunity to demonstrate ballistic-missile technology and other technologies having the potential for military application. Outer space has since been used as an operating location for military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites, and some ballistic missiles pass through outer space during their flight. As of 2018, known deployments of weapons stationed in space include only the Almaz space-station armament and pistols such as the TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol.
A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert kinetic projectile from orbit, where the destructive power comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. The concept originated during the Cold War.
Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. Several methods have been developed to carry out this task.
Gog is a 1954 independently made American science fiction film produced by Ivan Tors, directed by Herbert L. Strock, and starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, and Herbert Marshall. Gog was produced by Ivan Tors Productions and was filmed in Natural Vision 3D. The color process is credited to Color Corporation of America. The film was distributed by United Artists.
Sir Hugo Drax is a fictional character created by author Ian Fleming for the 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker. For the later film and its novelization, Drax was greatly altered from the novel by screenwriter Christopher Wood. In the film, Drax is portrayed by English/French actor Michael Lonsdale. In both the novel and film, Drax is the main antagonist.
Space Tug is a young adult science fiction novel by author Murray Leinster. It was published in 1953 by Shasta Publishers in an edition of 5,000 copies. It is the second novel in the author's Joe Kenmore series. Groff Conklin gave it a mixed review in Galaxy, noting that it held "plenty of excitement though not much maturity." Boucher and McComas preferred it to the series's initial volume, but still found it "quite a notch below ... Leinster's adult work." P. Schuyler Miller reported the novel was marked by "the fastest kind of action" and "the feeling of technical authenticity."
City on the Moon is a science fiction novel by Murray Leinster. This story was first published by Avalon Books in 1957. City on the Moon forms part of the To the Stars series by the same author, with two preceding books being Space Platform and Space Tug. It was released in 1958 by Ace Books under authority from Thomas Bouregy & Co using their Ace Double imprint reference number D-277. The novel details the events that unfold subsequent to an apparent sabotage attempt made against a lunar jeep on its return journey to the multinational civilian lunar city.
Project Mars: A Technical Tale is a science fiction novel by German-American rocket physicist, Wernher von Braun (1912–1977). It was written by von Braun in German in 1949 and entitled Marsprojekt. Henry J. White (1892–1962) translated the book into English and it was published later by Apogee Books (Canada) in 2006 as Project Mars: A Technical Tale, almost thirty years after von Braun's death. The original German text remains unpublished.
The year 1953 was marked, in science fiction, by the following events.
