THE WORLD IS GOING BALLISTIC
Posted by STEVE M on
The term ballistic describes the flight of an object through space, however, this same term is colloquially used to describe someone being extremely and unusually excited anxious or angry.
There seems to be a lot of that about in the World at the moment.
Here is a nice picture from 1957 of a one of the first ballistic devices (yes I do know about the V2!!!), it is of course a colourful representation subject to artistic licence of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite launched on 4 October 1957. It orbited for three weeks at an apogee (furthest point from Earth) of 940 km (584 miles) and a perigee (nearest point) of 230 km (143 miles), circling Earth every 96 minutes before its batteries ran out. The satellite then silently continued to orbit the planet for two months before it fell back and burned in Earth's atmosphere on 4 January 1958.
