Word: ft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Behind the moon again, on their 14th revolution, Eagle's descent engine was fired, slowing the module down and dropping it into the orbit that would take it to within 50,000 ft. of the lunar surface. The crucial word from Houston was relayed by Michael Collins, Columbia pilot, when a burst of static momentarily cut Eagle off from the ground: "You are go for PDI [powered descent insertion]." Again Eagle's descent engine fired, beginning a twelve-minute burn that was scheduled to end only when the craft was within two yards of the lunar surface...
...tension was obvious in the voices of both the crew and the controller. Just 160 ft. from the surface Aldrin reported: "Quantity light." The light signaled that only 114 seconds of fuel remained. Armstrong and Aldren had 40 seconds to decide if they could land within the next 20 seconds. If they could not, they would have to abort, jettisoning their descent stage and firing their ascent engine to return to Columbia...
Armstrong moved the still-operating camera to its panorama position on a tripod aimed at the lunar module. During the next two hours, the astronauts went busily about their appointed tasks, moving in and out of the camera's view. They planted a 3-ft. by 5-ft. American flag, stiffened with thin wire so that it would appear to be flying in the vacuum of the moon. Effortlessly they set up three scientific devices: 1) a solar wind experiment, consisting of a 4-ft.-long aluminum-foil strip designed to capture particles streaming in from...
...start, Eagle would have been stranded on the lunar surface. Too short a burn would have tossed the module into a trajectory that would send it smashing back onto the lunar surface. Had the LM achieved an orbit with an apocynthion (high point) much less than 50,000 ft., Columbia would have been unable to reach it. As it turned out, departure from the moon was triumphantly smooth. Of course, even after lift-off and redocking, there were still the dangers of the homeward trip. Control failures could cause the spacecraft to re-enter the earth's atmosphere...
...scene? Were the hundreds of thousands of tourists, the 6,000 or so special guests of NASA and the 1,782 journalists all foolish to take the trouble of being at Cape Kennedy? Just ask one who walked into the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the 363-ft.-tall Saturn 5 rocket was put together, and listen to him insist that no picture had ever prepared him for the experience of looking up at the towering vastness, the esthetic curves of the work platforms, the cathedral-like sense of man's puniness. No camera angle or word comparison can convey...