Word: descent
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Shepard's voice was clear and controlled. After maneuvering his capsule, he reported that it had assumed the proper attitude for firing its three braking retrorockets. They were not necessary for the flight; this time they were fired for practice. Then the retro package was jettisoned. Preparing for descent, Shepard reported that his periscope had retracted. As the capsule plunged downward into the atmosphere, and the Gs of deceleration climbed toward a punishing 10, the astronaut's voice grew gruff as he strained to make his breath behave. Then the capsule slowed; his words were distinct again...
...hotel is being laid. In Manila, Tokyo and Bangkok a network of agents are investigating new business opportunities. Masterminding this transpacific wheeling and dealing is stocky, cigar-chomping Chinn Ho, 57, the prototype of Hawaii's newest business phenomenon: the self-made, fast-moving Hawaiian millionaire of Oriental descent...
...first orbit as carefully as they did Gagarin's, which artfully swung around the earth in a pattern that avoided the major Western tracking outposts. In fact; the West saw neither initial orbit-but later picked up Gagarin's empty rocket casing still orbiting after his descent...
...Texas college president, Everett is the great-great-great-nephew of one of history's unlucky men: Edward Everett, the Massachusetts Senator (and onetime Harvard president) who delivered the two-hour "main" Gettysburg address, only to be upstaged in two minutes by Abraham Lincoln. Swift descent also once felled John Everett, when at 15 he took a sleepwalking dive from a third-floor window, breaking 36 bones and earning 4-F status in World...
...descent to earth, the most difficult and dangerous part of the flight, was still ahead. A last-minute failure might have left Gagarin in orbit to die a slow and lonely death, or fried him in the atmosphere. Earlier Soviet tune-up flights had suffered similar fates...