Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Science: Meteor Tunnel
Missile and space flight enthusiasts talk calmly about speeds above 10,000 m.p.h. Anyone who thinks that it will be easy to fly at such speeds has only to visit the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory at Buffalo, N.Y. and watch the tests being run in its hypersonic wind tunnel.
The hypersonic tunnel is a vacuum chamber at one end and a gas-charged cannon at the other. At the beginning of each test, a strong-walled tube six feet long and three inches in diameter is charged at high pressure with an explosive mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and...
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