Word: apollos
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...Apollo, built by North American Aviation, is by far the biggest, most sophisticated space vehicle ever made. It is to the Gemini what a Boeing 747 is to a DC-6-roomy enough for a man to stand erect and move about, equipped with space luxuries such as hammocks for stretched-out sleeping, hot and cold water, even a toilet...
...large rocket with 22,500 Ibs. of thrust to be used for space maneuverings, braking the ship into lunar orbit and supplying the propulsion necessary to send it back to earth. The whole capsule is 34 ft. long, weighs about 30 tons when fully fueled. Ultimately, the Apollo will also carry a lunar module, a buglike, rocket-powered ferry that two astronauts will board for the last-leg descent to the moon's surface, while the main capsule cruises in waiting orbit...
...spacecraft have their own personal quirks, and 204 had been balky from the start. As an Apollo engineer said: "The first article from the factory cannot come out without birth pains." The spacecraft gave repeated trouble. The nozzle of its big engine shattered during one test. The heat shield of the command module split wide open and the ship sank like a stone when it was dropped at high speed into a water tank. Certain kinds of fuel caused ruptures in attitude-control fuel tanks. The cooling system failed, causing a two-month delay for redesign. But all the bugs...
...first man ever to journey twice into space. Aided by Co-Pilot John Young, he scored yet another space first when he took over the controls himself, skill- fully piloted the craft through a series of tricky orbit-changing maneuvers. After that success, Grissom seemed to loosen up. The Apollo flight would have made him the only man to enter space three times. Hours before last week's disaster, Apollo Program Manager Shea remarked: "Gus really wants this flight. He's determined to keep that thing up there (16 days...
Roger Chaffee, the rookie of the Apollo team, joined the Navy after his graduation (aeronautical engineering) from Purdue in 1957, logged more than 1,800 hours flying time in jets before becoming an astronaut in 1963. During training for the Apollo mission, the boyishly handsome Chaffee came to be especially close to Grissom, at times even seemed to ape some of Gus's mannerisms. Though he prudently stayed in the shadow of his more experienced crewmates, Chaffee shared their burning ambition to land on the moon; in the den of his Houston home hangs a map of the lunar...