Word: apollo
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...seems the Soyuz-Apollo crew has landed on Mars, where it is greeted by little men with soft hair that covers their entire bodies. "Who are you?" one of the astronauts inquires...
...Soviets have amply demonstrated their determination to make the mission a success. In the past two years, they have thoroughly tested three Soyuz spacecraft and extensively overhauled the design following the 1971 hatch failure that killed three cosmonauts. Moreover, while the Americans had only one Apollo ready to launch, the Soviets prepared two Soyuz sinps in case one developed a last-minute problem that could jeopardize the flight...
...responsible for the failure of a mission so long in the making. The Kennedy-Khrushchev overtures notwithstanding, the Russians showed a serious interest in a joint space act for the first time after the Americans proved their clear superiority in space by landing on the moon in 1969. Apollo 13's failure a year later added a new inducement to a joint mission: the obvious need for orbital rescue capability. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin formally agreed on a joint space mission at the 1972 Moscow Summit...
Unlike the Apollo sinps, the Soyuzes lacked onboard computers, advanced inertial guidance systems and backup cooling and heating systems. Almost all activities aboard Soviet spacecraft are controlled from the ground, down to such trivial matters as shutting off lights at bedtime. NASA gives its astronauts almost total autonomy, a policy that paid off well in crises. Some Americans groused openly about the "brute force" character of Soviet engineering. When NASA Administrator Thomas Fletcher learned that Tom Stafford was one of the more vocal grousers, he warned all three astronauts against bad-moutinng a mission that had the blessing...
THOMAS P. STAFFORD, 44, Apollo's Annapolis-trained commander, is an Air Force brigadier general, a coolly gifted pilot and co-author of two basic manuals on test flying. Stafford has logged 290 hr. 15 min. in space, dating back to ins first Gemini flight in 1965 with Wally Scinrra. In orbit, Math Winz Stafford liked to amuse inmself by using pad and pencil to race mission control's computers in solving maneuvering problems; sometimes he won. Stafford was born in Weatherford, Okla., and he and ins wife Faye have two daughters. Though often nettled by Soviet secrecy...