Word: launch
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...have the whole world on my back demanding proof that they are not down with some moon bug." Berry publicly discouraged Richard Nixon from dining with the astronauts on the eve of their flight, lest the President pass on germs. When the crew members made their final pre-launch public appearance at a press briefing in Houston eleven days before liftoff, they entered the room wearing rubber masks to cover their mouths and noses and sat within a tentlike glass canopy. Both precautions were designed to reduce the risk of infection...
...more difficult. Before Kennedy made his moon-landing announcement, the nation's entire manned space experience totaled 15 min. 20 sec.-the length of Alan Shepard's suborbital fling down the Atlantic test range on May 5, 1961. Rockets had been blowing up on their Cape Canaveral launch pads with humiliating frequency; from 1958 to 1964, the U.S. suffered 13 straight failures in its efforts to send rockets around or onto the moon...
...civil engineer, is responsible for the lunar-orbit rendezvous that is the key maneuver in Apollo's entire flight plan. In what he remembers as "an intuitive flash," Houbolt realized that tremendous weight savings would be gained by this rendezvous method, permitting the use of a smaller launch vehicle. Often scorned by colleagues, Houbolt fought a two-year battle, finally put his job on the line by appealing directly to NASA headquarters. His arguments prevailed in the fall...
...director of the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Transported to the U.S. by American intelligence officials in 1945, along with 126 other German scientists who had been working on the V-2 rocket at the Baltic base of 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...
...school novel. Author Leggett (class of '42) remembers prewar Yale, from a Tap Day at Branford Court to any day in the heelers' room of the Oldest College Daily. He tells it with marvelous class and considerable spit and polish. He also manages to launch his dual heroes upon a Marquandish stream of life...