Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NASA Manned-Flight Director Robert Gilruth. "I think maybe this will not happen again." Growled NASA Director James Webb, "This was not an adequate performance by an astronaut." Gemini Pilots Virgil Grissom, 38, and John Young, 34, were on the carpet for something they did on their recent three-orbit mission. Gilruth and Webb told a congressional committee that the corned-beef-on-rye sandwich Young smuggled into their Molly Brown capsule and fed Grissom instead of the scientifically prepared flight diet was strictly unprogrammed. Mincing no words, the administrators decreed that henceforth "corned-beef-sandwich incidents" will cease...
...fast growing familiar with man's race beyond the confines of his own world, Early Bird reached back toward the earth and seemed to shrink it almost to room size. All by itself, the satellite blanketed more than one-third of the globe. If two more soar into orbit, for the first time in history it will be literally true that for every nation instant contact will be possible with every inhabited spot on earth...
First to fit all the new techniques together was Bell Telephone Laboratories, which built Telstar I, and had it launched at its own expense in July 1962. Circling in a comparatively low elliptical orbit, 600 to 3,500 miles above the earth, Telstar was a striking success; it relayed the first live TV picture (a view of the American flag) across the Atlantic to receiving stations in England and France. Telephone talk over Telstar was as clear as if the speakers were only blocks apart...
Desperate Ploy. At Hughes Aircraft Co. in California, however, three young engineers, Drs. Harold A. Rosen, Donald D. Williams and Thomas Hudspeth, were anxious to shoot for a higher target-nothing less than the 22,300-mile synchronous orbit conceived by Clarke back in 1945. They were sure they could lick its formidable problems, but they could not convince the Hughes management. "One day," says Hughes Vice President Lawrence A. Hyland, "Williams walked into my office and laid a cashier's check for $10,000-his entire savings-on my desk. 'Here's what I want...
...vital assumption: the moon has no heavy core like the earth's. Instead, it must have a heavy shell with lighter material inside. This would make the moon more reluctant to turn on its axis, and the extra resistance would account for its computer-calculated shift of orbit...