Word: launch
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...millions of veteran space-shot watchers, last week's televised launch of Apollo 7 had more than the usual elements of drama. It was the first U.S. manned flight since three astronauts were killed in a fire on the same launch pad 21 months before. Any more serious trouble would all but wipe out U S hopes of landing men on the moon before the end of 1969. Thus, as the towering Saturn IB rocket lifted ponderously off the pad after a heart-stopping moment of hesitation, U.S. hopes rose with it. At week's end, the eleven...
...lift-off seemed slow and laborious to viewers, there was good reason. Apollo and its two-stage launch rocket weighed a staggering 1.3 million lbs , only slightly less than the 1.6 million-lb. thrust of the Saturn 1B's first stage. As a result, acceleration was gradual; Astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham were subjected to only a fraction of the oppressive G-forces experienced on earlier flights by Mercury and Gemini crews...
...astronauts will also at tempt to rendezvous with the burnt-out final stage of their launch rocket, using only a sextant and a telescope for direction finding; the Apollo command module is not equipped with rendezvous radar. During their week-and-a-half space journey, they will start Apollo's large, 20,500-lb.-thrust engine eight times to test its reliability. That engine literally means the difference between life and death. On actual moon missions, it will be used to guide an Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the moon, and, later, to fire the craft out of lunar...
...sending the first manned craft around the moon, NASA has folded a spectacular bonus into Apollo 8's schedule. If all goes well with Apollo 7, Apollo 8 will be shoved from earth orbit to ward the moon by the last stage of its Saturn 5 launch rocket...
...these three missions without any serious problems would seem to violate the laws of probability. Apollo has 2,000,000 functional parts, 587,000 inspection points, and 47 engines (not including the 42 in Saturn 5 and three more in the escape tower that is jettisoned shortly after launch). Any one of those items conceivably could cause trouble. But NASA nonetheless is optimistically planning for success. Says Metallurgist Thomas Paine, who this week replaced retiring NASA Administrator James Webb: "We have put great stress on the ability of the Apollo 9 crew to operate the LM. All subsequent crews will...