Word: command
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fame, the upright citizen, the doer somehow left a bit unsophisticated despite his success and prominence. Nixon could scarcely contain his exuberance as he waited on the flag bridge of the carrier Hornet for the Pacific splashdown. Waving his arms, he exclaimed: "Oh, boy! Oh, boy!" As the Apollo command module bobbed in the sea, Nixon shouted down to the flight deck to ask the Navy band to play Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean...
...Columbia plunged to earth, its computerized guidance system took over and tilted the leading edge of the heat shield ever so slightly, to give the command ship more lift. That maneuver, a departure from the original flight plan, carried the craft 205 miles farther downrange to avoid a Pacific storm. A few moments later, swaying gently under its three bright orange and white chutes, Apollo 11 dropped into the Pacific nine miles away from the Hornet and only 1.7 miles off target...
...Franglais to crop up, such as "Voilá la go." Trader Vic's restaurants around the U.S. and in London served a tiny American flag in every cocktail; Harolds Club in Reno offered Moonshots of vodka and apple juice served in a glass shaped like Apollo's command and service module...
...ordinary telephone lines to radio and TV stations in New York for rebroadcast throughout the U.S. and the world. In one of the longest roundabout routes in the history of radio, Goldstone also relayed the voices back into space where they were picked up by Mike Collins in the command ship, some 70 miles above their source on the lunar surface. The reason for the round trip of nearly half a million miles: Collins was in direct radio line with the LM for only 15 minutes during each two-hour orbit of the moon...
...support room down the hall manned by a dozen or more experts. Complete telemetry from the spacecraft is received by staff-room consoles, which funnel the most important bits to the control room and store the rest. The space program's major contractors-North American Rockwell for the command and service modules, Grumman for the lunar module-also keep staff members in nearby offices. In case of trouble with spacecraft equipment, the contractors can call major subcontractors on their own hot lines. Mission Control maintains an up-to-the-minute list of the whereabouts of some...