Word: debusing
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Leonov's short "stroll" into personal orbit was one of the most remarkable achievements of the remarkable age of space. The Soviet success, said Kurt Debus, German-born director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, "points to sophistication in manufacturing, computers, metallurgy, ballistics, space medicine and the pure sciences. This effort proved in one stroke their standing in all these fields...
...proud history, the U.S. Army has suffered no more galling defeats than it did on the nation's peacetime rocket ranges after World War II. With a group of ex-Nazi rocketmen as its nucleus (Wernher von Braun, Kurt Debus), the Army bled its budget to set up in the missile business-and, in fact, saved the nation's face by launching the first U.S. satellite after Sputnik. But the Defense Department ruled that long-range rocketing was properly the role for the Air Force, and the Army's Redstone Arsenal was turned over to the National...
Steady Platform. In the blockhouse, Debus listened as the clipped argot of the missilemen's countdown came over the loudspeaker: "Telemetry-on. Radar beacon-on. DOVAP*-on." Hundreds of men both in and out of the blockhouse were doing thousands of things. The rocket itself had come awake. In its guidance section, a gyroscopically stabilized platform was accurately aligned with the intended course. When the rocket rose into the sky, the platform would keep steady in space, allowing the rocket's computer brain to steer by it as if it were both a compass and a horizon...
...late now to change the rocket's instructions, which would control its course inexorably once it had left the pad. Each second of delay, Debus remarked, would cost an error of 17 miles at the distance of the moon. He studied the jeweled panels of lights. They had been green, red and amber. Now all were green...
Black Line Payoff. At lift-off Dr. Debus looked through the window, studying the quality of the roaring flame. His experienced eye told him that ignition had been perfect. He strolled to the instrumentation room, where a moving pen was tracing a black ink line on a flowing chart. If the black line, which represented the rocket's trajectory, stayed sufficiently close to a blue line representing the planned course, all would be well. He watched for a minute or so. Then his saber-scarred face smiled gently. "It looks good," he said. Pioneer...