Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...C.E.A. is actually two accelerating devices--a linear accelerator, which feeds electrons into the rings, and the circular "race track" itself. After injection, the electrons whirl around the circular orbit through a slender evacuated stainless-steel tube, The tube lies sandwiched between the jaws of 48 C-shaped magnets, each 12 feet long and weighing six tons. These magnets provide the transverse force which keeps the electrons in a circular path...
Dutiful Flying. Everything went right from the beginning. Sigma 7 bobbed into a beautifully circular orbit, and calm, cool Navy Commander Walter Marty ("Wally") Schirra, 39, was in buoyant good humor. "Sayonara!" he cried when the escape tower separated, and soon he reported "all systems green and go." Then he settled down to cheerful, competent and dutiful space flying. He watched the instruments closely and talked with each control station as he passed near it. Like the other astronauts, Schirra ran into trouble with the water boil-off system of his space suit, and its temperature became so high...
Drifting & Dreaming. The Sigma 7 was equipped for a few scientific experiments, including some star observations for Schirra to make. But the main purpose of the six-orbit flight was to check the performance of the capsule's oxygen, electrical-and attitude-control systems. Considered critical was the amount of fuel needed. Schirra proved, as the technicians had suspected, that both Glenn and Carpenter could have managed with much less fuel if they had done less aimless maneuvering...
...fourth orbit, Schirra shut off all control systems and went into drifting flight, his capsule turning slowly as it swept around the earth. Sometimes he rode backwards, sometimes upside down, but since he was weightless anyway, this did not bother him at all. "Drifting and dreaming," he radioed cheerfully to the ground. He drifted for three hours and 26 minutes, burning no fuel. Astronauts Glenn and Carpenter used nearly all their fuel before reentry, but Schirra approached the critical moment with 80% of his fuel still untouched...
...immediate result of the flight was the probable cancellation of a second six-orbit jaunt. The next U.S. astronaut will probably fly 18 orbits early in 1963, staying in space for a full day. This will leave the U.S. still behind the Russians, whose heavier and better provisioned spacecraft have stayed in space for three and four days, but Astronaut Schirra-who is being called by admirers "the first real space pilot''-made a giant step toward catching...