Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...prospect was not wholly reassuring. Making a manned voyage to the moon and back is far more difficult than cartoonists, space fictioneers, or even most engineers think. It is more hazardous than the six-orbit Mercury mission scheduled for this summer. It involves almost every science known to man−including microbiology, astrophysics, and the farthest-out varieties of chemistry. It demands massive knowledge in such fields as lunar geology, as yet practically unexplored. The project is full of unknowns, threatened with unimagined perils, and it calls for money in war-sized chunks. Before the first American flies...
...ground with 7,500,000 Ibs. of thrust. Then a second stage, with five J-2 hydrogen-burning engines (1,000.000 Ibs. total thrust), will take over. Between them, the two stages will be capable of putting a 240,000-lb. payload on an earth orbit 140 miles high. A third stage, with a single J-2 engine, will push 90,000 Ibs. to earth escape velocity and deliver that hefty payload at the moon...
...satellite, but Goddard men launched it, and NASA's rich experience with space electronics made its triumph possible. Other communications satellites are even now in the works, including Relay, a joint NASA-RCA project that will be launched late this year, and Syncom, which will be placed in orbit 22,300 miles above the earth. Any one of these systems, or a combination, may eventually handle the bulk of the world's long-distance communications. These complicated communications satellites may soon become the biggest kind of commercial business, justifying in dollars and cents a hefty part...
...moon's mysterious surface than is now known. Another moon explorer under development by JPL and Hughes Aircraft is Surveyor, which will try to make a soft landing on the moon, take closeup pictures and transmit them to earth, besides analyzing samples of moon "soil." Later spacecraft will orbit the moon, photographing its topography in detail while mechanical eyes search for safe landing places for the spacecraft of human explorers. Long before men set foot on the moon, instruments will have made many parts of its surface fairly familiar...
...thinking, there are only three possible methods for making a manned moon expedition. The direct approach requires a multistage rocket big enough to fly straight to the moon and land a manned spacecraft there with everything needed for the return trip back to earth. Mode No. 2 is Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR), which requires two rockets to meet on an orbit around the earth. One of them fuels itself from the other and departs, replenished, for the moon. In mode No. 3, LOR (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous), a single rocket will proceed to the moon and park its manned upper stage...