Word: factly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...flying on the windless surface of the moon; a silicon disk bearing good-will messages for posterity from world leaders, including President Tito, Pope Paul and Queen Elizabeth; and a metal plaque bearing the names not only of the three astronauts, but also of President Richard M. Nixon, a fact that has stirred some criticism...
Lunar gravity is relatively so weak, as a matter of fact, that some scientists have suggested launching spacecraft by simply accelerating them with electrical power along a track. Unimpeded by atmospheric friction, the vehicles could accelerate very rapidly, limited only by the maximum gravity that their cargo could withstand. An unmanned craft designed to take a force of 50 G's, for example, could reach escape velocity on a track only four miles long. Manned ships, whose passengers could not be exposed to so high a G-force, would need a track considerably longer...
...school band. He studied hard, and while his teachers do not remember Armstrong as a particularly brilliant student, he impressed them all with the thorough, meticulous way he went about his work. Says Professor Paul E. Stanley, who taught Neil aerodynamics at Purdue: "He was a Boy Scout [in fact, he made Eagle Scout at 17], and he literally lived up to the motto 'Be Prepared...
...became one of the second group of astronauts to be chosen. As a civilian, he is paid more than any other astronaut ($30,054 a year, v. Aldrin's $22,650 as an Air Force colonel and Collins' $20,400 as an Air Force lieutenant colonel), a fact that has stirred resentment. There are men in the space program, in fact, who detect behind Armstrong's supercool all-American image a rigid character who has more faith in the perfectibility of machines than of people. "He's all scrubbed up on the outside," says a NASA official, "but inside...
...Mike Collins was fired by any particular ambition in his early years, he managed to conceal the fact. Even as a test pilot, and a member of a traditionally no-nonsense profession, he remained relaxed and easygoing. "He lived from day to day and didn't care too much about the future," recalls Bill Dana, a classmate of Collins' at West Point and a fellow test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. Adds Dana: "He didn't really take hold until he got into the space program." That happened in 1963 when NASA accepted his application to be an astronaut...