Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From a Cape Canaveral blockhouse the seven Mercury astronauts watched tensely last week as the countdown neared zero. Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of the type that is supposed to carry the first astronaut into orbit some time in late...
Spaceman Wernher von Braun called the misfire "a little mishap" bravely predicted that the U.S. would still manage to orbit a manned capsule by the end of 1961. But Project Mercury's latest failure, third in a row, just about evaporated the last faint wisp of hope that the U.S. might put a man into space before Russia does...
...years since NASA took over the Mercury program, its target date for getting a man into orbit and back has steadily shifted: from late 1959 to mid-1960 to late 1960 to early 1961 to mid-1961 and now to late 1961. Meanwhile, by sending the dogs Belka and Strelka into orbit last August and recovering them, the Russians have shown that it should not be much more complicated to put an astronaut into space any time they are willing to risk a man instead of a couple of mutts. "I would say that you could wake up any morning...
...space. The Russians have rockets with far greater thrust than the U.S.'s biggest. The space capsule that carried Belka and Strelka weighed five tons. The most powerful U.S. rocket available, the Air Force's Atlas, can at best put only a one-ton payload into orbit. What has delayed Mercury more than any other factor is the slow, painstaking miniaturization involved in devising an adequate capsule weighing only one ton. Because of such complications, some knowledgeable critics believe that it is high time for NASA to review the Mercury man-in-space project (cost to date...
Truncated Puppet. Frenchmen peered hopefully through the glorious opacity of De Gaulle's prose to see whether his rocket promised to go into orbit-or to fizzle. So far, the signs were not encouraging...