Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...face it. During this maneuver, protective panels will be jettisoned from the S-4B, exposing the dummy lunar module (LM) carried in its nose. The astronauts will then simulate docking with the LM-an operation that will be particularly important on the lunar-landing mission next year, when an Apollo spacecraft will dock nose-to-nose with a real LM before taking it into orbit around the moon. Finally, after the astronauts have jockeyed their craft some 8,000 ft. away, the S-4B will dump its remaining fuel into space. That action will generate just enough thrust to shove...
Some 30,000 miles from the lunar surface, Apollo will have slowed to a space-age snail's pace-2,170 m.p.h. At this point, lunar gravity will overcome the earth's diminishing pull, and the spacecraft will begin accelerating once more. Ahead, the moon will loom ever larger in the spacecraft windows. By the time Apollo curves around the western edge of the moon, its speed will have risen to 5,720 m.p.h...
Without any additional thrust, Apollo's own momentum and the weak lunar gravity would combine to carry it around the moon and fling it back toward earth in a spatial version of crack-the-whip. Indeed, if a recheck of systems and equipment convinces ground controllers and the astronauts that serious problems have developed, the crew will merely continue in this new course and travel back to earth. But if everything seems all right, Apollo's powerful SPS (service propulsion system) engine will be fired for 246 sec. to slow the spacecraft and allow it to be pulled...
...tenth lunar revolution, the Apollo crew will fire the SPS engine again-this time for 206 sec. -boosting their speed to 6,060 m.p.h., more than enough to break the moon's gravitational hold and start the spacecraft back toward the earth. About 57 hours later, accelerating under the pull of terrestrial gravity, the astronauts will position their craft properly and then jettison the service module. Streaking into the earth's atmosphere at an angle of 6.5° and a velocity of 24,765 m.p.h., the 11,700-lb. command module-all that will remain...
Acting NASA Administrator Thomas Paine believes that risks to Apollo 8's astronauts "will be within the normal hazards of test pilots flying experimental craft." The careful design, redesign and check-out of rockets and spacecraft, the policy of including duplicate systems wherever possible, and the logical, step-by-step progression of unmanned and manned Saturn and Apollo space shots, he says, "give us a great deal of assurance" about the moon flight...