Word: lunar
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...time Apollo approaches within 30,000 miles of its lunar target, its speed will have tapered off to 2,100 m.p.h. Then, as the moon's gravity begins to exert a stronger and stronger tug, Apollo will accelerate once more. To slow the spaceship down and place it in lunar orbit, Apollo's big engine will fire a strong braking blast. Following two circuits of the moon, the engine will be used again to move Apollo's orbit to 70 miles above the cratered lunar landscape, which the astronauts will survey and photograph. Eight revolutions later...
General Samuel Phillips, Apollo program director. "We achieved 101% of our objectives in this flight. This is a very major step toward the manned lunar landing, and I have every confidence that it will be accomplished by the end of next year...
...highlights of the flight were the docking maneuver and precise rendezvous with the discarded S-4B booster, and the eight successful burns of the service module's powerful propulsion engine. These operations will be essential on a lunar landing mission. While en route to the moon, the joined Apollo command and service modules must dock with the lunar module (LM), which will be carried inside the opened flaps of the S-4B. Later, should the LM become stranded in a lunar orbit on its way to or from the surface of the moon, Apollo would have to rendezvous...
...abandoned it as too expensive. The Soviets' last space shot, a circumlunar mission powered by a giant booster, suggested that they too had made the same decision. Now, no one can be sure. U.S. spacemen could only watch, wait and worry about where they stand in the lunar sweepstakes...
...Spacecraft Center in Houston. Said NASA's Christopher Kraft: "The performance of the vehicle to date has been very close to perfect." At week's end, officials were hinting that if Apollo 7 continued to perform faultlessly all the way through its splashdown this week, the planned lunar-orbital mission of Apollo 8 might well be advanced by two weeks...