Word: cooperating
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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That light was labeled ".05G"-indicating that the gravity pull on Cooper's capsule had built up to five one-hundredths of ground-level gravity force. The light should have blinked on only after Cooper's three retrorockets had been fired, nudging the capsule out of orbit. If working properly, the light would also mean that the autopilot system was set to start the capsule rolling slowly. The roll, imparting a corkscrew motion as the capsule bores into the atmosphere, would produce a smoother reentry...
...Cooper somehow slipped out of orbit? No. The Hawaii tracking station assured him that his position was proper. Was the light then merely faulty? Or had the autopilot re-entry circuit been triggered out of its normal sequence? On his 20th orbit, he was advised to switch to autopilot-and the capsule began to roll. He then knew that once he reached the .05G level on reentry, his autopilot would take over...
...Faith 7 blasted into the atmosphere, friction set up a curtain of ionization that knocked out communications. While in the ionized layer, Cooper fired small thrusters to make the capsule roll slowly. Once out of the layer, he triggered his drogue parachute by hand at 40,000 ft. His main chute blossomed at 10,000-and he scored his bull's-eye landing off the Kearsarge. Capsule engineers, who constantly complain that astronauts would fly much better if they would just sit back and let their autopilots do the work, ruefully admitted that Cooper proved them wrong. Said...
...physical checks on the Kearsarge, Gordon Cooper displayed a momentary dizziness upon stepping out onto the deck after 34 hours and 20 minutes of weightless flight through 22 orbits-a space trip surpassed only by the 64-and 48-orbit tandem missions of Soviet Cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich last August. He had lost 7 Ibs. since his Canaveral liftoff, and in his dehydrated state, he gulped down four glasses of pineapple juice and six glasses of milk...
...Then Cooper did something he does almost as naturally as he flies. He slept for 9½ hours, awoke refreshed. He was placed on a tiltboard, and his pulse and blood pressure were checked in both horizontal and vertical positions. The doctors found that these measurements were normal. With that good news, he was ready to meet his wife and daughters in Hawaii, then to fly to Washington this week for a hero's welcome by President Kennedy and an admiring nation...