Word: mightly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...week's end, the first box was opened by a technician working with surgical care as his gloved hands reached into a sealed vacuum chamber, where the lunar package had been placed. While four NASA geologists looked on, he slowly drew off any gases that might have been given off by the rocks, opened the box, then removed a piece of foil that had been used to trap solar particles and two lunar core samples. Finally, he opened the plastic bag containing the rocks themselves. The scientific observers said that the 15 or so rocks -the largest...
...began acting up. The squiggly lines transmitted from the moon, Press concluded, resembled the tracing of the surface waves of a moderate-sized quake on earth. Other geologists, including U.C.L.A.'s George Kennedy, who took up Press's champagne challenge, had different ideas. The shock, they said, might have been caused by a meteorite. Another possible cause: the moon's natural "groaning" under the tug of the earth's gravity...
Despite such minor hitches, scientists were in unanimous agreement on the value of the expedition. The landing site, especially, pleased geologists. "It is a very much rockier surface than we might have expected," said NASA Geology Consultant Eugene Shoemaker, who thinks that it afforded a far wider sampling of the lunar surface than would have been found at a smoother landing site. Boulders ejected from craters as far away as 600 miles might well be in the area, he added. Another unexpected dividend, said NASA Geologist Ted Foss, was that many of the rocks may have come from the large...
...moon walk itself raised almost as many questions as it answered. "They had more mobility and they were able to move faster with greater ease than some of us expected," said Gilruth. "They only used about half to a third of the oxygen and water that we might have expected them to use." But why did Aldrin have so much trouble penetrating the lunar surface beyond a few inches with his core sampler? Why was he able to plant the stand for the solar wind experiment only a few feet away with such ease? Why did the blast from...
...loss of a national asset." He fears that NASA's skilled engineers and scientists may be dispersed after the last of the nine remaining Apollo missions is flown in 1972. The space team has already shrunk from 400,000 in 1966 to 140,000 today, and the group might be difficult to rebuild. "To continue to attract the kinds of people that made this program possible," says George Mueller, NASA's manned-spaceflight chief, "we must have challenging and interesting and rewarding things to accomplish...