Word: crew
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first four days of their climactic mission, Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins will follow closely the space route taken by Apollo 10 in May. Until the lunar module swoops to within 50,000 ft. of the moon, the Apollo 11 crew will face familiar challenges and risks. A minor malfunction could turn the flight into a simple earth-orbital mission or a quick loop around the moon. A more calamitous equipment failure could cause Apollo 11 to crash into the moon or leave the craft stranded in lunar orbit. But from the moment that Houston radios...
...safety of their triple-sealed vacuum storage boxes, the lunar samples will be rushed to the LRL even before the Apollo 11 crew members arrive to wait out their 21-day quarantine period. There are "time-critical" tests that must be performed swiftly to detect any gas or radioactivity that the samples may give off; the emissions may decrease or stop soon after the sample is removed from the lunar surface. The samples will be sealed off from the rest of the world by a double biological barrier: 1) a vacuum system and a series of vacuum chambers in which...
Michael Collins, 38, owes his couch on the moonship to a bout of bad health. He was to have been a member of the Apollo 8 crew, which made man's first orbits around the moon last Christmas. A paralyzing bone spur in the neck sent Collins to the hospital in June 1968 for a risky operation, however, and Bill Anders took his place. The surgery was a complete success, and Collins was back on full flight status by last November. It was much too late for him to resume his original place with the Apollo 8 crew?...
...members of Apollo 11's crew are seasoned, imperturbable astronauts. Armstrong, known as an inscrutable loner, flew Gemini 8 to the first successful space docking. Aldrin, a hard-driving perfectionist, set the record for space walking (5 hr., 30 min.) during the four-day flight of Gemini 12 in 1966. Collins, the most relaxed and outgoing of the three, helped steer Gemini 10 through complicated rendezvous and docking maneuvers...
Dehumanized or not, the crew fully measures up to Boss Astronaut Donald K. ("Deke") Slayton's tough requirements. "You're really looking for a damn good engineering test pilot," says Slayton. "They've got to be good stick and rudder men, and also real smart." Not many qualify. Of 1,400 applicants for the last batch of astronauts in 1967, only eleven were chosen. There are now only 49 astronauts and, in many ways, all are as precise as the laws of celestial mechanics?and as unforgiving as the machines that hurtle them through space. Says Slayton of his astronauts...