Word: launching
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...trip. For in the long moments of the last drop, Surveyor's own computers and radar were issuing the necessary orders. And back on earth, 230,930 miles away, the craft's creators could do no more-no more than pray that their design and pre-launch calculations were all correct...
Twice the launch had been scrubbed, once on May 17 when the Agena target failed to orbit, and again earlier in the week when Gemini 9's on-board computer rejected vital data three minutes before liftoff. Now, for the third time, Astronauts Tom Stafford and Eugene Cernan wearily returned to the pad at Cape Kennedy for a mission that had the earmarks of a rueful joke...
...were kidding before, But not any more. Get your-er-selves into space Or we'll take your place. Stafford and Cernan themselves wryly presented the launch crew with a yard-long red and white baton topped by a light bulb. It was a match, they explained, that the crew was to use to achieve a successful "burn...
...first, the humorous approach seemed to work. The giant Titan 2 rocket rose on schedule from the launch pad and placed Gemini 9 in an almost perfect orbit. Then, after only three revolutions around the earth, Stafford and Cernan sighted and successfully rendezvoused with their quarry-the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) that had been launched into or bit two days before. But there before their eyes was another disappointment...
With rib-cracking insight, Arkin plays Rozanov, leader of the scouting party that slips ashore to commandeer a launch and stays to persuade the island's crotchety nor'easterners that a full-scale invasion has begun. Taking over a tailor shop, subduing a telephone operator (Tessie O'Shea), Arkin's response to crisis is a cunning blend of caution, mad sweetness and reluctant acts of aggression, all booby-trapped with nuance about the love-hate relationship between East and West. Though many of his lines are in Russian (hastily acquired for this role), his Red-roving...