“It’s the space position finder,” Tom replied. “Sort of a space radarscope.”
He flicked a small toggle switch. As the screen lighted up with a hum, he tuned several knobs. Instantly the lower half of the screen was painted with a reddish phosphorescent glow.
“It’ll look like this whenever we’ve landed,” Tom explained. “That red area represents the earth. In flight, we’ll see the planets or other objects as round dots, and the color will show us their height above or below our orbital plane.”
“How about that panel over on the right?” Bud asked curiously. “The one with all the astro-whoozical names on it.”
Tom walked to the right-hand control board,
84 THE RACE TO THE MOON
grinning. “As you can see, these dials are labeled for the earth, moon, sun, Mars, Venus, and so on. They tell the distance and relative angle of each body from our spaceship. In other words, they give us an exact reading of the picture shown on the screen.”
“But these meters calibrated for thrust-where do they come in?”
“They tell us how much power we have to feed to the radiators for any desired acceleration,” Tom explained. A warning buzzer sounded in the compartment. “There’s Hank giving us the green light. Let’s take ‘er up, Bud!”
Quickly the boys strapped themselves into their seats.
“Do we use the auxiliary rockets this time?” Bud asked.
“Just the repelatrons,” Tom replied. “If they give us enough power for takeoff, we’ll know they can deliver enough thrust for space travel.”
Outside the view windows, Hank Sterling held up his thumb and forefinger circled together. Watchers and ground crew retreated from the launching area.
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