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

86 companion body
companion body
A portion of a spacecraft or a payload, such as the last
stage of a rocket or a discarded part, that orbits unattached
to but along with its parent.
complex
The entire area of launch site facilities, including the
blockhouse, launch pad, gantry, etc.; also referred to as
the launch complex.
composite
Two or more distinct materials, the combination of
which produces a new material with more desirable properties
such as increased strength, lower density, or resistance
to high temperatures. Composites are now used
extensively in spacecraft and launch vehicle structures.
Carbon-carbon composites, for example, are found in
reentry vehicle nose tips, rocket motor nozzles, and leading
edges of the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
composite propellant
A solid rocket propellant consisting of an elastomeric
(rubbery) fuel binder, a finely ground oxidizer, and various
additives.
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO)
The second of NASA’s Great Observatories and the
heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown at the time of
its launch in 1991. CGRO was named after the American
physicist Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962) and carried
four instruments that covered an unprecedented six
orders of magnitude in energy, from 30 keV to 30 GeV. In
this energy range, CGRO improved sensitivity over previous
missions by a full order of magnitude and, during
nine years of service, revolutionized our understanding
of the gamma-ray sky. Following the failure of one of its
three gyroscopes, NASA decided to de-orbit the spacecraft,
and it reentered on June 4, 2000.
Shuttle deployment
Date: April 7, 1991
Mission: STS-37
Orbit: 448 × 453 km × 28.5°
Size: 9.1 × 4.6 m
Mass: 15,620 kg
comsat
See communications satellite.
Comsat (Communications Satellite Corporation)
An organization established by an Act of Congress in 1962
to provide satellite services for the international transmis-
sion of data. Comsat was the driving force behind the creation
of Intelsat and served as the U.S. signatory to Intelsat.
In 2000, Comsat was acquired by Lockheed Martin,
which thus became the largest shareholder in Intelsat (privatized
in 2001) and also Inmarsat (privatized in 1999).
cone stability
The inherent stability of conical shapes to fly without
fins, provided the center of mass is ahead of the center
of pressure.
Conestoga
A privately funded commercial launch vehicle built by
Houston-based Space Services (SSI), which became the
Space Service Division of EER Systems in 1990. Following
a 1981 launch failure of Percheron, its first liquidfueled
rocket, SSI successfully tested its solid-propellant
Conestoga 1, based on a Minuteman second-stage engine,
in 1982. However, the first operational flight of the
rocket and the attempted launch of NASA’s Meteor
satellite in 1995 failed when the vehicle was destroyed 45
seconds into its first-stage burn. There have been no further
launches.
Congreve, William (1772–1828)
An artillery colonel in the British army whose interest in
rocketry was stimulated by the success of Indian rocket
barrages against the British in 1792 and again in 1799 at
Seringapatam (see Tipu Sultan). Congreve’s black powder
rockets proved highly effective in battle. Used by
British ships to pound Fort McHenry, they inspired Francis
Scott Key to write of “the rockets’ red glare” in a poem
that later provided the words to The Star-Spangled Banner.
Congreve’s rockets were used in the Napoleonic Wars
and in the War of 1812. 314
conic sections
A family of curves obtained by slicing a cone with planes
at various angles. This family includes the circle, the
ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola. Its members
include all the possible orbits an object can follow when
under the gravitational influence of a single massive
body.
Conquest of Space, The
(1) Book (1949) written by Willy Ley and illustrated by
Chesley Bonestell, based on material published earlier in
a series of Collier’s magazine articles on space travel (see
Collier’s Space Program). It is best known for Bonestell’s
inspirational paintings, including 16 in full color. (2)
Film (1955) directed by George Pal and partly inspired by
Ley and Bonestell’s book. In a thematic sense, Conquest
was a sequel to Pal’s Destination Moon (1950), taking