Page:Introduction to Outer Space (1958 booklet - FAS scan).pdf/13

 What is the effect of weightlessness on physiological and psychological functions? (Gravity is not felt inside a satellite because the earth's pull is precisely balanced by centrifugal force. This is just another way of saying that bodies inside a satellite behave exactly as they would inside a freely falling elevator.)

The satellite that will turn its attention downward holds great promise for meteorology and the eventual improvement of weather forecasting. Present weather stations on land and sea can keep only about 10 percent of the atmosphere under surveillance. Two or three weather satellites could make a cloud inventory of the whole globe every few hours. From this inventory meteorologists believe they could spot large storms (including hurricanes) in their early stages and chart their direction of movement with much more accuracy than at present. Other instruments in the satellites will measure for the first time how much solar energy is falling upon the earth's atmosphere and how much is reflected and radiated back into space by clouds, oceans, the continents, and by the great polar ice fields.

It is not generally appreciated that the earth has to send back into space, over the long run, exactly as much heat energy as it receives from the sun. If this were not so the earth would either heat up or cool off. But there is an excess of income over outgo in the tropical regions, and an excess of outgo over income in the polar regions. This imbalance has to be continuously rectified by the activity of the earth’s atmosphere which we call weather.

By looking at the atmosphere from the outside, satellites will provide the first real accounting of the energy imbalances, and their consequent tensions, all around the globe. With the insight gained from such studies, meteorologists hope they may improve long-range forecasting of world weather trends.

Finally, there are the satellites that will look not just around or down, but out into space. Carrying ordinary telescopes as well as special instru-