Word: known
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perhaps most intriguing is what the moon may reveal about the earth's murky infancy. The earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, but the slow, relentless process of its evolution wiped out all traces of its earliest years; the oldest known terrestrial rocks date back about 3.3 billion years. "What has happened during the missing 1.2 billion years?" wonders Astronomer Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "We do not know; they are a blank page in the history of our planet. If the age of the rocks on the surface...
...members of Apollo 11's crew are seasoned, imperturbable astronauts. Armstrong, known as an inscrutable loner, flew Gemini 8 to the first successful space docking. Aldrin, a hard-driving perfectionist, set the record for space walking (5 hr., 30 min.) during the four-day flight of Gemini 12 in 1966. Collins, the most relaxed and outgoing of the three, helped steer Gemini 10 through complicated rendezvous and docking maneuvers...
...Peenemünde, Von Braun has directed development of rocket-launch vehicles from the earliest Redstone. Von Braun helped develop the ablative heat shield, which dissipates the searing heat of reentry by flaking off in harmless fiery pieces. His Huntsville group can also claim credit for what has become known in the space agency as "cluster's last stand"-the grouping of several smaller rockets in a cluster to provide as much thrust as would a single, far larger rocket engine. Saturn 5's first stage, for example, uses five F-1 engines, each generating...
Other men were almost as indispensable. Maxime A. Faget, director of engineering and development at Houston's Manned Spaceflight Center, designed Apollo's command and service module. Dr. George E. Mueller, NASA's top official for manned spaceflight, introduced a time-saving technique known as "all-up testing," in which all three rocket stages are tested together. Christopher Columbus Kraft, director of flight operations since 1961, and George Low, manager of the Apollo program, brought a sense of cool discipline to the nerve-racking operations in Houston...
...house into order before we expand into others. But it is good to know that they are there-even though extensive alterations will be required to make them comfortable. Our generation has learned how to kill a world; the same powers can bring life to worlds that have never known...