Science: Toward the Moon

Precision was hardly a precise enough word to describe what would be required of the rocketing spacecraft Ranger 6 as it reached for the moon. To begin with, said the Jet Propulsion Laboratory men who sent it on its way, Ranger would have to hit the imaginary opening at the lower end of an imaginary pipe curving through space—a ten-mile circle 115 miles above the earth. Only if it scored a bull's-eye at just the right orbital speed would Ranger have a chance of getting where it was supposed to go. And even then...