Word: burnes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...silent. Apollo would be behind the moon and out of contact for 45 minutes. Until it emerged, no one on earth would know if the SPS engine had fired on schedule (25 minutes after LOS) or fired long enough to place the craft in orbit. Too short a burn, the controllers knew, could send Apollo smashing into the moon. But there was another problem that caused concern on the ground. Apollo's third-stage S-4B rocket, jettisoned shortly after it pushed the spacecraft out of earth orbit and toward the moon, was scheduled to pass the trailing edge...
...engine failed to ignite, or burned too briefly during the attempt to place Apollo into lunar orbit, the spacecraft would have looped around the back of the moon and headed directly back toward earth. If the engine had cut off during one crucial 30-second interval of the scheduled burn, Apollo would have been left in an unstable orbit and crashed into the surface of the moon. And, if the astronauts had not succeeded in restarting the engine after orbiting the moon, they would have been left stranded in space without hope of rescue. This point was not lost...
...cities will burn . . . You are the people who will build up the ashes...
...systems aboard their spacecraft and the attached S-4B rocket were operating perfectly, and nothing stood in the way of making the final thrust. As Apollo passed over Hawaii on its second orbit of the earth, the astronauts fired the S-4B engine It was a perfect burn The spacecraft increased its velocity from 17,400 to 24,200 m p h. The speed was enough to enable the spacecraft to escape from the earth's gravitation pull. At long last, man was on his way to the moon...
WEDNESDAY: Shortly after midnight on Christmas Day, the astronauts planned to burn Apollo's engine again, in order to boost their speed to 6,060 m.p.h., and head back toward earth. This maneuver would also occur behind the moon, so that long minutes would pass before earth stations knew whether it had been successful. The Apollo crew's itinerary called for spending the remainder of the day and all day Thursday in housekeeping chores and navigation tests while coasting back toward earth. There were also to be two more live telecasts to earth from the spacecraft...