Word: mooned
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Your article "Capturing a Moon and Other Diversions" [Feb. 21] may appear entertaining or even flippant to some. But it will help persuade today's disenchanted student that science is not merely intellectually satisfying (and fun) but really relevant to problems that society faces...
...display of public fervor. It was therefore predictable that Richard Nixon's earnest pilgrimage stirred less excitement last week than the triumphant passages of his more glamorous predecessors, Eisenhower and Kennedy -or even than the European hegira early last month of Astronaut Frank Borman, fresh from orbiting the moon...
While the various factions wrangled, Engineer Houbolt, whose work at NASA's Langley Research Center was not directly connected with space flight, was impressed by still another moon-landing technique: the lunar-orbit rendezvous. Houbolt's plan was to leave the mother craft in orbit around the moon while a light, ferrylike craft descended from it to the lunar surface carrying only one or two of the astronauts. Later, the little craft could blast off, rendezvous and dock with the mother ship, and then be left behind in lunar orbit as the astronauts returned to earth...
...argued that the concept would save an immense amount of fuel. Because the lunar lander would not need a heavy heat shield for a return through the earth's atmosphere and would not have to carry additional equipment and supplies for the long trip to and from the moon, it could be tens of thousands of pounds lighter than other lunar landing vehicles. The weight reduction would be great enough, he calculated, for the entire mission to be launched by one Saturn 5-type rocket...
...planning group by writing letters to Robert Seamans, then NASA Associate Administrator (and now Secretary of the Air Force). One of them began: "Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness . . ." It went on to plead, "Give us the go-ahead and we will put men on the moon in very short order." Gradually, as the difficulties with alternate plans became evident, Seamans and others began to realize the virtues of Houbolt's scheme...