Word: launching
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Routine Now. More detailed knowledge of micrometeoroids is considered essential for man's safety in space. But even so, orbiting Pegasus was not the most significant achievement of the Saturn launch. Far more encouraging for the future of space exploration was the smoothness with which the many-tiered rocket was dispatched into...
...moon. Saturn's second stage teaches an even more difficult art. Its six Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engines burn liquid hydrogen, which is incredibly touchy to handle, but has an added efficiency that is considered essential for the moon project. The smooth success of last week's launch suggests that LH2 has at last become a routine fuel...
Ranger VIII hit the ten-mile target at the correct speed, set itself at the proper angle to the sun and the earth, and kept in tight communication with its ground-control stations. About 17 hours after launch, the command came from its masters at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to prepare for the critical mid-course maneuver. Dutifully Ranger writhed in space, turning its gleaming golden body as it was told. It fired its small rocket engine for 59 seconds, and when it had writhed back again to cruising attitude, JPL scientists predicted that it would hit inside...
...Tranquillity was the target picked before the launch. Ranger VII had photographed a fairly smooth-looking place now called the Mare Cognitum (Known Sea) and found it to be pocked with small pits apparently made by chunks of rock tossed out of the crater Copernicus. A lunar landing vehicle might have serious trouble with such pits, and the hope was that the Sea of Tranquillity would prove to be smoother...
...mountain town 240 miles north of Saigon, where about 1,000 American military men are stationed. When President Johnson received word of these raids, he conferred by phone with Defense, State Department and CIA officials, convened a Saturday night session of the National Security Council, made the decision to launch jet attacks on North Vietnamese staging areas. Next morning he met again with the NSC, reviewed the results of the air strikes...