Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...evaluation time at Cape Canaveral last week, and if U.S. space technicians have any complaint, it is that U.S. space travelers still seem to think they are primarily airplane drivers. Like Colonel John Glenn before him, Commander Scott Carpenter soared into orbit with remarkably little faith in his capsule's automatic positioning equipment. He spent all but a few minutes of his five hours aloft "flying" his spaceship by hand, changing its attitude while in orbit with squirts of peroxide steam, at one point using two systems at once. As a result, he all but ran out of fuel...
...Much Control. By his own time-consuming efforts to control his capsule, articulate Astronaut Carpenter learned valuable lessons about how to fly, and how not to fly, orbiting spacecraft. Such a ship moves on a predetermined orbit, and except for firing retrorockets for reentry, an astronaut cannot appreciably change its course or speed. If he applies no control at all, the capsule will go through a drifting motion, rolling and tumbling slowly as it circles the earth...
...space explosions, the AEC has deployed a net of supersensitive instruments, some of them halfway around the world. These mechanical observers will watch the sky for auroras, feel the soil for electric currents, measure changes in the earth's magnetic field. At least two U.S. satellites now in orbit also carry equipment to observe the experiments, and foreign scientists are preparing for their own test watch. Before each explosion, the AEC has promised, all the world's laboratories will get advance word of when to watch for electrical disturbances, spreading like gigantic ripples from far-off Johnston Island...
...nation's second astronaut soared into orbit, landed all over the front pages of the U.S. press and, after a parade or two, almost dropped from view. In Maine, the Portland Press-Herald paid fond front-page homage to a resident who had celebrated his 100th birthday; in San Francisco, the Examiner hoisted one of its favorite banner headlines: S.F. MERCHANT SLAYS BRIDE IN LOVE NEST. In New York, the World-Telegram & Sun bannered an example of typical Communist behavior (REDS SPY ON U.S. A-TESTS), and the Post reported a typical episode in the life of a movie...
...crisis came on the third orbit. Project communicators, listening intently to Carpenter's voice as he passed overhead, were disturbed by his tone. "We feel the astronaut was acting somewhat tired during the last pass," the Woomera station later reported. Added the station at Kauai, Hawaii: "We had the impression that he was very confused about what was going on, but it was very difficult to assess whether he was confused or preoccupied...