Word: missions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With their successful mission, the four astronauts leaped over past delays and put the U.S. space program back on schedule. Pure science and practical engineering had cooperated to solve the incredibly complex equations of orbital mathematics. Human skill and human courage had added the vital ingredients that made the computations correct. Now the dream of docking two spacecraft while they whirl through their curving courses promised to be no more of a problem than parking a compact car; rescue of astronauts adrift in space became a definite possibility. A manned orbiting laboratory suddenly seemed more than an imaginative scheme...
Spirit of 76. NASA's timetable calls for the first U.S. astronauts to explore the moon within four years, a goal that has always seemed unduly optimistic-by almost any standards. But Gemini's "Spirit of 76" mission last week dispelled most doubts. It brought the elusive moon into reach, and gave U.S. astronauts good reason to start planning still more ambitious voyages, as hostile space began to show the first small signs of hospitality...
...biggest moment had already passed. That was the historic instant when the two space capsules eased into sight of each other. For Gemini 7, it marked the end of a long loneliness; for Gemini 6, it meant the end of a long period of misfortune. Until then, its mission had seemed dogged by failure...
...farther away from the earth. A satellite orbiting close to earth, where the pull of gravity is strong, needs a high velocity to keep itself aloft. At higher altitudes, where the strength of gravity has decreased, a lower velocity will maintain an orbit. In last week's rendezvous mission, Gemini 6 was inserted into a lower orbit than Gemini 7; thus it was moving at a higher speed and would eventually overtake its target...
Right Answers, Right Time. Despite such complexities, the scheduled maneuvers were perfectly calculated by one of the unsung heroes of the mission: an IBM 7094 Mode II computer, one of five located deep in the bowels of NASA's Mission Control Center near Houston. Primped and primed and ready to go for more than a year, the electronic memory housed in the grey, blue-trimmed cabinets had been taught all the incredible complications of orbital calculations, had learned the long, involved equations worked out by teams of crack mathematicians...