Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...prevent a recurrence of Apollo 13's troubles, NASA has drastically altered the design of Apollo's oxygen tanks, incorporating such safety features as stainless-steel-sheathed electrical wiring, heat regulators controlled by the astronauts, and external cutoff switches. In addition, NASA has added a third oxygen tank, a long-lived storage battery and extra water supplies as reserves for the command ship. Even Mission Control will profit from the $15 million safety overhaul. If any of Apollo 14's critical systems go awry, as did the defective oxygen tank in Apollo 13, loud beeping alarms will...
...earth. Ever since T-minus-21, or three weeks before liftoff, Shepard and his two crewmates have been kept in relative isolation at Cape Kennedy. Only people absolutely essential to their mission have been allowed to come in contact with them (only exception: their wives). Others, such as NASA scientists, must brief them from behind glass partitions in their sealed-off crew quarters. With the quarantine, NASA hopes to avert another Apollo 13-type measles crisis, which nearly caused a last-minute cancellation of the mission after one of the back-up astronauts contracted the disease on a preflight visit...
Apollo 14 is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific south of American Samoa nine days after its liftoff. If its mission is successful, NASA hopes it will rekindle dwindling interest in manned lunar exploration. Space officials feel that if it is a failure, it may well be the last such moon mission of the decade...
...Redstone rocket into a high, arcing 302-mile flight over the Atlantic. For the U.S., that brief, 15-min-ute suborbital ride began the era of manned space flight. Next week, his lean body practically unchanged by the passage of years, the same pioneering astronaut will command NASA's fourth manned assault on the moon. At the age of 47, Captain Alan B. Shepard Jr. is the oldest American* ever to soar into space, the only one of the original Mercury astronauts still on flight status and clearly one of the comeback heroes of all time. In 1963, after...
...excellent shape. "I still have a muted ringing in it, like a dog whistle," he says, "but I hardly notice it." He has also apparently mastered, in spite of initial difficulties, the split-second control techniques of the tricky lunar lander. Indeed, his confidence should help bolster all of NASA at a critical moment in its history. "I suppose," muses Shepard, "if we don't make it back to earth, somebody will say the poor son of a bitch wasn't ready. But I am ready...