Word: apollos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once he was satisfied with the redesigned craft, Low moved fast. Last August, when it became apparent that the earth-orbiting December flight of Apollo 8 would be delayed by problems with the lunar module, he proposed a bold plan: an Apollo 8 moon orbital mission-without the LM. He was more than convincing, and that is why Apollo 8 got the go-ahead for its historic trip...
...expressing his ideas, and in pushing them into reality, Low has earned a reputation of being reserved and distant. He is not a humorous man, nor one given to poetic fantasies. Yet last week he was as thrilled as any of his five children by the feat of Apollo 8. "I looked at the moon after Apollo 8 went into orbit," he says. "It looked different...
COMPARED with the mighty Saturn 5, which generated 7,500,000 Ibs. of thrust in its first stage alone, the little engine seemed puny indeed. But the importance of the Apollo spacecraft's 20,500-lb.-thrust Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine was far out of proportion to its 31-ft. length. The engine's faultless operation made the difference not only between a relatively simple moon shot and last week's sophisticated mission, but also between life and death for the astronauts...
...engine failed to ignite, or burned too briefly during the attempt to place Apollo into lunar orbit, the spacecraft would have looped around the back of the moon and headed directly back toward earth. If the engine had cut off during one crucial 30-second interval of the scheduled burn, Apollo would have been left in an unstable orbit and crashed into the surface of the moon. And, if the astronauts had not succeeded in restarting the engine after orbiting the moon, they would have been left stranded in space without hope of rescue. This point was not lost...
...reliability tests that extended over a period of five years, Aerojet and NASA technicians fired SPS engines some 3,200 times without a malfunction before qualifying them for manned flight. Although the total firing time on the Apollo 8 mission was scheduled to take no more than seven or eight minutes, the combustion chamber was designed to operate for 121 minutes. During tests, it actually held up for more than 30 minutes without burning...