Word: lander
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...tell the celebrations apart at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (J.P.L.) in Pasadena, Calif. They back-slapped and high-fived when the Pathfinder lander bounced down on Mars in 1997 and when the Spirit and Opportunity rovers followed in 2004. They cheered when the Cassini probe went into orbit around Saturn last summer and when the Huygens lander reached the surface of the planet's moon Titan months later. If it's possible to grow tired of popping corks and raising glasses, the J.P.L. engineers may be getting close...
...former J.P.L. director Ed Stone. Adds Elachi: "Almost every lab director has kept the same philosophy." That has helped the lab survive many rocky patches, such as in the 1960s, when Pickering's moon probes flopped six times before Ranger 7 succeeded; and in 1999, when the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter failed. The message from management remained the same. "We encourage [employees] to push the limits in a thoughtful way," says Elachi. "We keep telling them, 'Look, setbacks are going to happen. And when they do, we will stand...
...Apollo moonships and the Saturn rockets that launched them had an extraordinary safety and success record, relying on the old concept of throwaway parts: When one stage of a rocket is spent, dump it in the ocean; when you're through with your lunar lander, leave most of it on the moon...
...moonships fix all that. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has called the new generation of spacecraft "Apollo on steroids" and that's a good description. The command and service modules-which will carry the crew-do look like pumped-up Apollos. And the spindly lunar lander is a decidedly more muscular version of the earlier...
...parts of the shuttle will be cannibalized to build them. A mammoth new heavy-lift cargo booster will be assembled out of two of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters and up to six of its liquid fuel main engines. This would be used to put an unmanned lunar lander and a small upper stage rocket into Earth orbit. A smaller booster, made of a single solid rocket and a single liquid-fueled engine, would then launch the four-person crew in the command module. The astronauts would dock with the lunar lander, light the upper-stage engine, and head...