Word: missions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...been ?and would be?dangerous enough. At any point during the eight-day journey, a massive failure of the electrical or oxygen systems, or a collision with a large meteor would almost surely result in tragedy. But lift-off was the most nerve-racking part of the mission. If the ascent engine had failed to start, Eagle would have been stranded on the lunar surface. Too short a burn would have tossed the module into a trajectory that would send it smashing back onto the lunar surface. Had the LM achieved an orbit with an apocynthion (high point) much...
Through the remainder of the outbound flight, Apollo 11 astronauts were less talkative than their Apollo 10 predecessors. "It's all dead air and static," said an official in Mission Control...
EVEN if their mission is a complete triumph, the Apollo 11 astronauts will face a reception far different from those accorded to previous space heroes on their return to earth. There will be no casual camaraderie with the frogmen after splashdown, no lengthy welcoming rites aboard the recovery carrier, no embraces with their wives in Houston. The moon voyagers will be treated-literally-as if they had the plague...
...recirculated, to cleanse it of any unwelcome organisms. Body wastes will be sterilized, and any notes that the astronauts wish to pass outside will be sterilized first for 16 hours in ethylene oxide gas. Even the traditional flight debriefing will be sterile. The astronauts will review details of their mission on one side of a glass wall while NASA officials question them and listen on the other side, communicating through a speaker system. In the same room, the astronauts will chat through the glass with their families...
Most people seemed as awed by the colossal scale of the undertaking as they were baffled by its complexity. To many, the long series of space shots had become routine-until the moment that the mission of Apollo 11 finally struck home. Across the land, at the instant of launch and landing, women dabbed their eyes and men blinked back their emotions. In Alaska, Newspaper Publisher Larry Fanning observed: "Intellectually and emotionally, man is incapable of parsing out the stunning implications of this fantastic voyage...