Word: beaning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...They missed a diverting incident. The Apollo 12, with a price tag of roughly $375 million, represents a refinement of hundreds of years of scientific experiment and theory, the most intricate hardware of a technological civilization. Yet when the television camera fritzed out on the lunar surface, Astronaut Alan Bean had a moment of atavism. Like any other 20th century man confronted by the perversity of nonfunctioning machines, he whacked it with his hammer...
...pick a destination on the moon's rugged surface and reach it as reliably as a taxicab finds a street address in Manhattan. Directly ahead of Intrepid lay the five craters that form the familiar pattern of "Snowman." Guided unerringly by the spacecraft computer. Astronauts Conrad and Alan Bean headed straight toward the target picked months earlier in Houston: Surveyor Crater, which forms Snowman's torso and is the spot where 21 years ago the unmanned Surveyor 3 landed on the moon. Conrad could scarcely believe his eyes. "Son of a gun!" he said. "Right down the middle...
Crater's Edge. Only 500 ft. above the surface, Navy Pilot Conrad took control of the LM for the final few seconds of the descent, while Bean read data from the instrument panel: "Forty-two ft., coming down at three [ft. per sec.]. Forty coming down at two. Looking good. Thirty-one, 30 ft., you've got plenty of gas, plenty of gas, Pete. Stay in there. Eighteen ft., coming down. He's got it made. Come on in there. Contact lights!" Although thick dust kicked up by the LM's rocket engine obscured his view...
Conrad and Bean on the surface of the moon, should help appease some scientists who have become increasingly critical of NASA's space program. Several scientists have recently quit the space agency, charging that it is emphasizing technology at the expense of scientific investigation. Only last week, in fact, a presidential panel complained that NASA has not yet done enough research on man's capability to operate for long periods of time in space. Bean seemed anxious to stress that NASA was aware of the gathering criticism. On the Apollo 12 mission, he said, "the name...
...Alan L. Bean, 37, lieutenant commander U.S.N., a space rookie, is the most serious of the Apollo 12 astronauts. A devout Methodist, he carried a church banner covered with such Christian symbols as a fish and chalice aboard Yankee Clipper. At the University of Texas, which he attended on a Navy scholarship, Texas-born Bean made the wrestling and gymnastic teams and met his wife Sue, a college tumbler. Like most of the astronauts, he likes to exercise (his favorite sport: surfing in the Gulf of Mexico). Calm, self-possessed and straightforward, he trained patiently for six years...