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

422 stratosphere
stratosphere
The layer of Earth’s atmosphere immediately above the
troposphere, extending to the mesosphere; that is, between
altitudes of 10 to 15 km and 50 km.
Strela
(1) A Russian space launch vehicle converted from the
RS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (NATO classification:
SS-19 Stiletto) and marketed by Space Development
Corporation Strela (“arrow”) is 26.7 m long with a
takeoff mass of 104 tons and can carry a payload of up to
1,700 kg into low Earth orbit. With production of Cosmos-3M
rockets halted in 1995, Russian agencies have
few choices other than converted RS-18s and RSD-10Ms,
like Strela, Start, and Rockot. Of Russia’s 160 nuclear
warhead–bearing RS-18s, 55 must be decommissioned by
2007 under the START 2 treaty. The RS-18 has logged
146 launches over the past 27 years, with 143 of them a
complete success. Strela will be launched from Svobodny,
Russia’s newest spaceport, a converted facility
that used to serve as the base for a military ballistic missile
unit. (2) A long-running series of Russian military,
store-dump communications satellites, the first of which
was launched in 1964. The latest batch of six Strela-3
satellites was placed in highly inclined 1400-km-high
orbits by a Tsyklon rocket on December 28, 2001.
stressed limits
The environmental limits to which the crew may be subjected
for limited periods of time such as launch, reentry,
and landing.
Strughold, Hubertus (1898–1987)
A German-born pioneer of space medicine and the
author of over 180 papers in the field. Strughold was
brought to the United States at the end of World War II
as part of Operation Paperclip and subsequently played
an important role in developing the pressure suits worn
by early American astronauts. In 1949, Strughold was
made director of the department of space medicine at the
School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Air Force Base,
Texas (now the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks
Air Force Base, Texas). Randolph’s Aeromedical Library
was named after him in 1977, but it was later renamed
because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal
linked Strughold to medical experiments in which
inmates from Dachau concentration camp were tortured
and killed.
STRV (Space Technology Research Vehicle)
Satellites designed to allow in-orbit evaluation of new
technologies at relatively low cost. The first two, STRV-1A
and -1B, were designed, built, and tested at the U.K.
Defence Research Agency (DRA) at Farnborough and
launched together in 1994. Each of the 52-kg spacecraft
carried 14 experiments, most of them associated with
ongoing research programs within the DRA’s Space
Department. In addition, there is a major international
collaborative aspect to the project. The Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization (BMDO) Materials and Structures
Program sponsored four experiments that were built
at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and flown aboard
STRV-1B. ESA (European Space Agency) submitted experiments
for STRV-1B.
stub fins
Short-span aerodynamic surfaces, used on some launch
vehicles for control or stabilization purposes.
Stuhlinger, Ernst (1913–)
A physicist who played an important part in the development
of rocket instrumentation, first in Germany during
World War II and then in the United States. He
earned his Ph.D. at the University of Tübingen in 1936
and continued research into cosmic rays and nuclear
physics until 1941 as an assistant professor at the Berlin
Institute of Technology. In 1943, while serving in the
German army on the Russian front, he was assigned to
Wernher von Braun’s rocket development team at Peenemünde,
where he worked on guidance and control systems
until 1945. After the war, he came to the United
States as part of Operation Paperclip to continue work in
rocketry, first in Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands, New
Mexico, and, from 1950 on, at the Redstone Arsenal in
Huntsville, Alabama, which became the Marshall Space
Flight Center (MSFC). Stuhlinger was director of the
space science laboratory at MSFC (1960–1968) and then
its associate director for science (1968–1975), after which
he retired and became an adjunct professor and a senior
research scientist with the University of Alabama at
Huntsville. His main areas of work included guidance
and control, instrumentation for scientific investigations,
electric space propulsion systems, and space project planning.
280
subcarrier
A second signal piggybacked onto a main signal to carry
additional information. In satellite television transmission,
the video picture is transmitted over the main carrier;
the corresponding audio is sent via an FM
subcarrier. Some satellite transponders carry as many as
four special audio or data subcarriers, whose signals may
or may not be related to the main programming.
subluminal
Less than the speed of light.