Word: lunar
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...test turned to Apollo coasting through space at 15,000 m.p.h. Inside the 24-ft. spacecraft and its service module was virtually everything that will go to the moon-except the three astronauts, their couches and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), for which ballast had been substituted. At an altitude of 310 miles, a programmer-filling in for the astronaut pilot-ordered the Apollo's own 22,900-lb.-thrust engine to head the craft back to earth, increase its speed, then separate the module just before reentry...
...carrying 1,000 passengers and flying just under the speed of sound will of course be old hat. The new thing will be transport by ballistic rocket, capable of reaching any place on earth in 40 minutes. In Rand's Delphi study, 82 scientists agreed that a permanent lunar base will have been established long before A.D. 2000 and that men will have flown past Venus and landed on Mars...
...something unusual happening? Not likely. While most scientists found no reason to doubt Kotelnikov's figures, they did not share his surprise. Records of solar and lunar eclipses from as far back as 500 B.C. prove that days have been lengthening by an average of 1.8 milliseconds every century as tidal drag on the earth caused by both the moon and sun gradually slows terrestrial rotation. The same records confirm that sudden changes in the rate of slowdown have occurred before, probably because of varying interaction between the earth's mantle and its molten core, or shifts...
Western experts had speculated that the landing-site time had been picked so that Luna could begin operating near the start of a two-week period of lunar daylight. They figured it would have about 14 days of continuous sunshine to keep its solar batteries charged. Instead, the Russians explained, their intention was merely to land and operate Luna 9 during the early lunar morning-before surface temperatures could rise to their maximum of about 250° F. and damage delicate equipment. Thus their ship was equipped only with standard, unrechargeable batteries...
Though Luna 9 successfully disposed of the hypothetical thick layers of lunar dust, said University of Arizona Astronomer Gerard Kuiper, some parts of the moon could still present a hazard to landing spacecraft. Photographs from the U.S. Ranger 9 moon probe show that between 5% and 10% of the lunar surface is covered by depressions, apparently areas of thin crust that have sagged into caves or voids under the surface. Should a spacecraft land on such a crust, he believes, it might crash through into the cave below...