Word: astronauts
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...space law, while most ominous when they touch upon the military, nonetheless are so broad that space lawyers-a new but growing breed of specialists-have hardly begun to consider their ramifications. What happens, for example, if a civilian British scientist should kill an American or a Russian astronaut on the moon? Who would arrest whom, and what court of what country would have jurisdiction? Despite the fact that nations have forsworn territorial rights on celestial bodies, questions of property rights are bound to arise when exploration and interplanetary travel increase. The French have already raised one question: What happens...
Even the flight's one notable failure -the unexpected early end to Astronaut Richard Gordon's space walk - provided scientists with valuable data that may help prevent similar problems on future missions. It was also a humbling reminder that for all his powerful rockets, com plex capsules and sophisticated electron ics systems, man's frail frame itself is the limiting factor in space exploration...
Temporary Blindness. Only minutes after he emerged from Gemini's open hatch, Astronaut Gordon was in trou ble. Though he had done nothing more than detach a cosmic-ray counter from the spacecraft's hull and mount a movie camera on a bracket behind the hatch, his heart was beating wildly, he was bathed in perspiration and panting for breath. "I've got to rest a minute," he gasped. "I'm pooped." After regaining his breath, he inched forward to Gemini's nose, which was securely locked in the docking collar of the Agena target...
Gordon's troubles, similar to those encountered by Astronaut Eugene Cernan on the flight of Gemini 9, were proof to NASA officials that the mere effort of controlling arm and leg movements during a weightless space walk in a bulky space suit is far more trying than anyone had imagined. As a result, future space flights will probably schedule less ambitious space-walking chores...
...Propulsion Laboratory maneuvered Orbiter ever closer to the moon's surface in an attempt to eliminate the fuzziness of its high-resolution camera shots (TIME, Aug. 26). Acting after a suggestion from Eastman Kodak technicians that the camera might begin returning clear pictures of possible astronaut landing sites if it were operated from an altitude of 25 miles, they fired Orbiter's retrorocket for three seconds, reducing the low point of its orbit from 30.4 to 25.1 miles, and got it into position for more photography...