Word: apollos
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...already changed his mind. The Apollo 8 moon mission, he feels, should have an air of unmatched excitement. Washington Correspondent David Lee and Houston Stringer James Schefter, who also reported for this week's cover, agree. The close race with the Russians, the pride of trailblazing, the somberness of three men risking their lives-all combine to give this next moonbound flight a very special aura...
Neff is sure that "no unmanned flight, however impressive its mission, can ever equal the sense of commitment and challenge" he saw building up during this cover assignment. "And no manned flight," he reported, "will ever match the suspense of Apollo 8." Then he had a cautionary thought: What about the shot that will actually land a man on the moon, perhaps by next summer...
...sheer drama of man's first flight to the moon-the spectacle, the perils and the uncertainty-has been heightened by the prospects of a close race between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. has announced that on Dec. 21 it hopes to launch three astronauts aboard Apollo 8. According to the projected schedule, they will circle the moon ten times, starting on Christmas Eve, then return to the earth, where they will land 21 days later. Russian plans, as usual, are cloaked in secrecy. But many Western experts who have pieced together clues from Moscow rumors, recent Soviet...
That danger is a long shot indeed. Apollo's engine has been checked countless times in flight and on the ground. At the slightest hint of trouble, the mission could be safely aborted at any of a dozen points along the way. Even as Apollo nears the moon, the astronauts will still be able to make a "nogo" decision. Should the spacecraft fail to be slowed down as planned, it can simply make a high-speed loop of the moon and head back toward earth...
...NASA officials are jittery at all, it is because of heightened Soviet space activity. As NASA was announcing the Apollo flight plan, Russia's unmanned Zond 6 was heading toward its own rendezvous with the moon. The Soviets also disclosed last week that in October, Zond 5 had carried the first creatures around the moon-two turtles, some wine flies and meal worms. But the Russians were notably taciturn on details of these missions...