Word: apollos
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Housekeeping Chores. When Apollo 7 takes off this week, the conical NASA command module, carrying the three astronauts, and the attached cylindrical service module, will be launched into orbit by a Saturn 1B rocket, which is not powerful enough for the moon mission. "Simply flying the vehicle will be a major test in itself," says Flight Director Lunney. "The men will do the works-move around and eat, manage the housekeeping chores and keep the cockpit running." In the process they will be fully occupied keeping track of 24 instruments, 566 switches and 40 "on-off" in dicators that show...
...astronauts will also at tempt to rendezvous with the burnt-out final stage of their launch rocket, using only a sextant and a telescope for direction finding; the Apollo command module is not equipped with rendezvous radar. During their week-and-a-half space journey, they will start Apollo's large, 20,500-lb.-thrust engine eight times to test its reliability. That engine literally means the difference between life and death. On actual moon missions, it will be used to guide an Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the moon, and, later, to fire the craft out of lunar...
Spectacular Bonus. Apollo 8, which will carry Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders into orbit late in December, was originally designed to duplicate this week's flight and to recheck any equipment or procedures that go wrong on Apollo 7. Now, spurred by growing concern that the Soviets are planning to upstage the U.S. by sending the first manned craft around the moon, NASA has folded a spectacular bonus into Apollo 8's schedule. If all goes well with Apollo 7, Apollo 8 will be shoved from earth orbit to ward the moon by the last...
Near the moon, the spacecraft will be braked enough to be pulled into a 60-mile-high lunar orbit. It will make ten 2-hr. circuits while the astronauts shoot movie and still pictures of the lunar surface below. Then Apollo 8 will return to earth, using re-entry techniques tested last April during the unmanned flight of Apollo...
Come February, Astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart are scheduled to zoom into earth orbit aboard Apollo 9, the first complete moon package to be shot into space. In addition to the Saturn 5 rocket and the Apollo command and service modules, the package will include the trouble-plagued lunar module (LM) that is destined, eventually, to land on the moon. The mission will include space walks, rendezvous and docking maneuvers, and the first transfer in space of astronauts between Apollo...