Word: grounds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ordered a change in the way things were done in space. Newly independent Ukraine was overcharging Russia for its automated-guidance equipment, so rather than let that system steer the robot spacecraft to the red zone--the point 100 yds. from the station where the commander takes over--ground control wanted the crew to maneuver the ship all the way in using only a video camera mounted on Progress and a black-and-white television screen in the station's core module to guide...
...astronaut Jerry Linenger aboard Mir, the TV camera had quit at the last minute in a practice run, and Tsibliyev--one of the space agency's best pure pilots--had narrowly averted disaster. Now, with Foale onboard, the TV system once again operating and Progress stabilized several miles away, ground control ordered Tsibliyev to try the same exercise again. "This is a bad business, Sasha," Tsibliyev said to Lazutkin as he picked at his food...
JUNE 25, 1 P.M. Vasili Tsibliyev sorely wanted to leave the bridge. His ship was damaged; his crew was alone; and it was safe to assume that this, the ground's second experiment with seat-of-the-pants flying, was over...
...ground controllers had different ideas. "Stay at your post!" they ordered. Tsibliyev repeated his request a few minutes later, and was told again, "Stay at your post!" At NASA, once the sworn rival of the Soviet space program, such an order would probably not stand, not when the pilots being commanded were self-styled cowboys like Alan Shepard or Gordon Cooper. But the Russian program was a different beast, and cosmonauts learn early that the word of the ground is all but inviolable. Tsibliyev, despite himself, stayed at his post...
...tipping its huge, energy-producing wings out of alignment with the sun. Unless the ship got realigned, it couldn't produce power. And unless the ship produced power, there was no way to fire up its thrusters and change its position. Tsibliyev reported this technological Catch-22 to the ground...