Word: moons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...module (LM) that lifted from Cape Kennedy last week was the ugliest of ducklings. Bulging and misshapen, bristling with squiggles of antennas, the LM seemed more the creation of scientists gone mad than a craft entrusted with Project Apollo's most crucial task: to land astronauts on the moon and lift them off again. But in a seven-hour test flight, LM last week performed like a full-fledged space swan...
Cautious Computer. Nearly five hours later, when the cold of space had stabilized the craft's temperature to the point it would be in the vicinity of the moon, LM began a scheduled twelve-minute burn of its 10,000-lb.-thrust descent engine, which was to begin at 10% of its rated power and gradually throttle up to almost full operational power after 26 seconds. The operation was designed to simulate the burn that would put the LM on a trajectory from the moon-orbiting Apollo command ship to the lunar surface. But after only four seconds...
...give up our trip to the moon and build some hospitals? Give up our voyage to Mars and buy some beds and equipment. Let's leave Saturn alone for awhile and train more nurses. Let's have more doctors, more schools, more colleges, more teachers. Why not take care of us here on earth first and then investigate whether the Martians like vanilla or chocolate ice cream...
...plan was to lower a "golden jewel box" to the moon's surface, dig an 18-inch hole with the spacecraft's mechanical arm and claw, then use the arm to put the jewel box in the hole. By bombarding the claw-dug moon material with alpha particles and measuring the speed and number of the rebounding particles, the 8-in.-sq. box could identify the chemical composition of substances beneath the moon's surface. Contamination by material from other parts of the moon and from meteorites would be avoided...
...free the box, the scientists began lowering it on a nylon cord. Halfway down, the box stuck. Using the spacecraft's TV camera to hunt for the source of the trouble and working with duplicate models, JPL scientists and engineers from JPL and Hughes Aircraft, designer of the moon robot, struggled to set it free. Twice they nudged it with the digger arm. No luck. All it did was swing a bit. Then they tried again, using the arm to steady the box against Surveyor and simultaneously pressing down. This time, success. The box descended to the lunar surface...