Word: apollos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...absurd was the idea of lunar travel, so unlikely was its success, that at the moment of the Apollo program's crowning glory, it almost seemed as if it wasn't happening at all. In order to have any realistic chance of making it to the lunar surface, the astronauts had to spend years rehearsing their missions, drilling and drilling and drilling the landings until they almost drilled the juice out of them. The first words spoken after the Apollo 11 lunar module actually touched down were not, as most people believe, "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed...
...most of the Apollo crews, trained in the lone-eagle ethos of the fighter pilot, lunar travel was an unsettlingly bureaucratic exercise. Flying to the moon was not about a solitary Lindbergh climbing inside a hammered-tin airplane and flying, skeeter-like, out over the Atlantic. Rather, it was an idea that was hatched by government, executed by industry and bankrolled by a taxpaying public that knew full well the breathtaking cost of the project and yet year after year kept writing the checks...
...million lawn ornament is--or was--a Saturn V rocket, one that was briefly known by the promising designation Apollo 18. Originally built to carry men to the surface of the moon, Apollo 18 was poised to go until the early 1970s, when the U.S. ran out of both the money and the will to make that kind of journey, and the giant missile was ordered to stand down...
Between 1968 and 1972, however, nine of Apollo 18's brother rockets did fly astronauts to the moon, six of them taking crews straight down into the powdered-sugar soil of the ancient lunar surface. Thirty years ago, Apollo 11, the first of those historic missions, took off from Cape Kennedy carrying space veterans Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Four days later, on July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin actually set their ugly, leggy lunar module down on the plains of the Sea of Tranquillity, becoming the first two men to walk on another world. Over the next...
BARBIE STRIKES AGAIN As if there weren't enough Barbie paraphernalia already, HP's Apollo division has unveiled the first Barbie-theme printer, the P-1220, in "mist gray with glitter pink accents." When released in July, it will come with Barbie Magic Hair Styler software and heart- and flower-shaped decals. Unfortunately, the $80 printer is not much more than a pretty face. It prints a sluggish 1.5 pages per minute in color, or 3.5 pages in black-and-white. At least kids will have something cute to look at while they wait...