Word: on-board
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Brute-Force Buttonhook. The fuel problem arose during Gemini 10's tricky fourth-orbit rendezvous with Agena 10. To determine the final thrust required for the interception, Young and Collins used data from the on-board radar, inertial guidance and computer system. In some as yet unknown way, the system produced a figure nearly 7 ft. per sec. greater than the figure radioed up from ground control. When Collins' own slide-rule tabulation agreed with the spacecraft guidance system, Command Pilot Young chose to go with the double-checked on-board answer...
Twice the launch had been scrubbed, once on May 17 when the Agena target failed to orbit, and again earlier in the week when Gemini 9's on-board computer rejected vital data three minutes before liftoff. Now, for the third time, Astronauts Tom Stafford and Eugene Cernan wearily returned to the pad at Cape Kennedy for a mission that had the earmarks of a rueful joke...
...their second rendezvous, the astronauts maneuvered to a point 13 miles below and behind the ATDA, then again effortlessly closed the gap, using only an on-board computer and a handheld sextant. Next, to simulate an emergency rendezvous during the actual Apollo moon flight, they moved Gemini eight miles above and 86 miles ahead of the ATDA, then attempted to close in again with the aid of ground controllers. This time they ran into trouble-losing sight of the ATDA against the confusing background of the earth below, consuming eleven hours and 30 extra pounds of fuel before accomplishing...
...problem and told Armstrong how to solve it. But the spaceship was in a dead zone between stations, and in all its maze of instruments, none was designed to report when thrusters were firing. Though the short circuit might have required early termination of the mission anyway, such on-board instrumentation would have enabled Armstrong to bring Gemini under control much more quickly...
...on-board cameras were torn loose and wrecked. From the one camera left, Princeton Astronomer Donald Morton was able to recover only three frames of exposed film -and two of those were unusable. But that final frame turned the whole experiment into a resounding success. Last week, after careful analysis of the spectral lines recorded on his film, Morton was able to offer exciting new evidence toward the solution of an old astronomical enigma: Why are there so many white dwarf stars in the sky when there have been so few of the supernova explosions that are believed to produce...