The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

314 Palapa
Paine, Thomas O. Thomas Paine (center) being appointed
NASA administrator by President Richard Nixon (left), with
Vice-President Spiro Agnew standing alongside. NASA
settlements beyond Earth orbit, from the highlands of the
Moon to the plains of Mars.” The report also contained a
“Declaration for Space” that included a rationale for
exploring and settling the Solar System and outlined a
long-range space program for the United States.
Palapa
Indonesia’s national communications satellite system.
Palapa 1 and 2, launched in 1976 and 1977, were among
the first indigenous comsats. Stationed in geosynchronous
orbits, Palapas provide voice circuits and television
to Indonesia’s more than 6,000 inhabited islands and its
neighboring countries.
Palmachim
An Israeli air base and missile test site, located south of
Tel Aviv at 31.9° N, 34.7° E, from which the Shavit
satellite launch vehicle is deployed. Due-west launches
over the Mediterranean are required to avoid overflying
Arab countries, resulting in unique orbital inclinations
(142°–144°) and direction.
Paperclip, Operation
The American scheme to detain top German scientists at
the end of World War II and relocate them to the United
States. These scientists included Wernher von Braun and
more than 100 of his colleagues who had worked on the
V-2 and other “V” weapons. Having been transferred to
their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation
just north of El Paso, they were given the job of
training military, industrial, and university personnel in
the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles and helping
refurbish, assemble, and launch a number of V-2s that
had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands
Proving Ground in New Mexico. President Harry Truman
had given the go-ahead to Paperclip on condition
that none of the detainees could be shown to have been
members of the Nazi party or active supporters of the
Hitler regime. However, it is now clear that many of the
key figures in the roundup, including von Braun himself,
Arthur Rudolf, and Hubertus Strughold, had been
enthusiastic Nazis and, in some cases, had been aware of,
or even involved in, atrocities inflicted on concentration
camp detainees.
parabola
A curve, with an eccentricity of 1, obtained by slicing a
cone with a plane parallel to one of the cone’s sides. A
parabola can be thought of as an ellipse with an infinitely
long major axis. It is one of the conic sections.
parabolic flight
The following of a special parabolic trajectory by a suitably
fitted aircraft in order to reproduce the conditions of
freefall for a short period. Such flights are used as a routine
part of astronaut training.
parabolic orbit
An orbit around a central mass that is followed by an
object that, at any point on its path, has the minimum
velocity needed to escape from the gravitating mass. See
conic sections.
parabolic reentry
Reentry at speeds of less than 11,100 m/s. Above this
speed, reentry is said to be hyperbolic.
parabolic velocity
In theory, if the velocity of an object moving in a circular
orbit is multiplied by the square root of 2 (approximately
1.414), the orbit will become parabolic. For
example, the Earth is moving in a near circular orbit
about the Sun at a mean velocity of 29.8 km/s, so that its
parabolic velocity would be 41.8 km/s. If the Earth’s
orbital velocity were to be increased to this value, our
planet would be able to escape from the Solar System.