Word: armstrong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...plight of Gemini 8 seemed desperate enough while it tumbled out of control on its high orbit. Last week, when the perils of that wild ride were reviewed at a Houston press conference, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott seemed to have come even closer to disaster. Their firsthand account, and further interpretation of telemetered data, supplied frightening new details about Gemini's troubles; to make the danger even more dramatic, there were the remarkable color snapshots and motion pictures brought back to earth by the astronauts...
...while Gemini 8 was docked with the Agena that the joined vehicles suddenly began to tumble as if some attitude-control thrusters had gone amuck. Since the Gemini's thrusters were turned off and the Agena's could be seen firing, Armstrong assumed that it was the Agena controls that were at fault. After cutting off the Agena thrusters, he struggled for 10 minutes to bring the joined ships under control. Then he undocked, still unaware that the real trouble was a short circuit in Gemini's electronic control system that had caused its No. 8 thruster...
...Entry Endangered. As the roll rate increased to a terrifying one revolution per second, Armstrong realized that Gemini was at fault; he quickly threw circuit breakers that cut off the flow of fuel and oxidizer to all of the attitude thrusters, including No. 8. The roll-with no friction or counterfiring thruster to stop it-continued undiminished. It was at this point that Armstrong resorted to the independent reentry rocket system to bring Gemini back under control. Once the vital re entry control fuel had been tapped, however, Gemini's ability to make a successful re-entry was endangered...
...Gemini been within range of a tracking station when trouble began, ground controllers could have immediately diagnosed the problem and told Armstrong how to solve it. But the spaceship was in a dead zone between stations, and in all its maze of instruments, none was designed to report when thrusters were firing. Though the short circuit might have required early termination of the mission anyway, such on-board instrumentation would have enabled Armstrong to bring Gemini under control much more quickly...
Around the time that Astronauts Armstrong and Scott were ordered to return to earth after less than a day in orbit, two Russian space travelers were finishing a much longer flight. After 22 days in orbit in their Cosmos 110 satellite-longer than any other living beings have spent in space-Cosmodogs Veterok and Ugolyok were brought down to a safe landing in Russian Central Asia. Still wearing their space jackets, they were promptly flown to Moscow for a triumphant TV appearance...