Word: mooned
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...engine It was a perfect burn The spacecraft increased its velocity from 17,400 to 24,200 m p h. The speed was enough to enable the spacecraft to escape from the earth's gravitation pull. At long last, man was on his way to the moon...
Uncharted Perils. The drama visibly affected normally imperturbable space officials. "If we hadn't had other manned flights before," said Kennedy Space Center Director Kurt Debus, "the excitement, the stress would be unendurable. To go to the moon is symbolic of mans leaving earth, of opening vast new frontiers." The impending flight inspired Robert Gilruth, director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, to deliver a rhapsodic Christmas message to the centers 4,500 employees: "Perhaps the ancient mariners had the same feeling of anticipation as they set sail through the Straits of Gibraltar past the limits of the known world...
...good reason for both exhilaration and apprehension. As they began their pioneering journey, Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders were pushed into space by a rocket that had never before been used in manned flight. Only minutes after they were propelled out of earth orbit toward the moon, they were farther than man has ever been from his home planet (the previous record of 850 miles was set by the US. Gemini 11 mission...
Ahead lay clearly defined perils, and perhaps some uncharted ones as well, Power-or oxygen-supply failures so far from earth might well doom the astronauts. Failure of the key Service Propulsion System (SPS) at crucial junctures could send them crashing into the moon or leave them stranded in lunar orbit...
...moon? Congressman Olin Teague, a member of the House space committee, answers with a question: Why did Lindbergh go to Paris? "He didn't give a damn about Paris," says Teague, "but he gave a damn about how he got there. The same applies to the moon." During a debate about a small appropriation for aircraft research 60 years ago, Teague notes, some Congressmen predicted that the airplane would never contribute anything to the economy and would remain only "a toy for millionaires...