Word: orbiteer
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...Saturn 5 rocket lifted from tis pad a negligible 65 milliseconds after its scheduled 7:51 am launch time Propelled by an awesome 7,500,000 lbs. of thrust, it soared into the clear Florida sky over Cape Kennedy Two hours and 20 minutes later, as Apollo whirled in orbit around the earth, came the anxiously awaited word to make the translunar insertion-the ma neuver that would send the vehicle to ward the moon...
...Target. The fresh view of the universe was made possible by the successful launching of the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, which began probing the heavens with eleven telescopes while circling the earth in a 480-mile-high orbit-well above the confining atmosphere. Unfolding its solar panels, the OAO obediently performed operations that assured ground controllers that it was in good working order. Then the 4,400-lb. spacecraft turned to its first assignment. Rolling slowly in space, it sought out two reference stars and unerringly swung its telescopes toward a bright Southern Hemisphere star named Miaplacidus...
...stellar performance should ensure continuation of the $321 million OAO program, which in the next three years is scheduled to launch three more observatories. Since April 1966, when a $69 million OAO went dead in orbit be fore it could return any useful information, NASA scientists have been aware that another failure might well spur Congress into cutting off the program's remaining funds...
Although they freely acknowledge the numerous possibilities of failure, NASA officials nonetheless exude confidence in Apollo 8 and its crew. They expect the mission to go all the way. In the thorough investigation that preceded the decision to send the spacecraft into lunar orbit, says Manned Space Flight ""Director George Mueller, "we found no incipient problems. The odds for complete success of Apollo 8 are as good as they were for Apollo...
...Soviets took an equally big lead in manned flights. Yuri Gagarin orbited in Vostok I more than a month before Kennedy's 1961 speech, and ten months before the U.S. could place John Glenn in orbit in Mercury 6. Russian cosmonauts also compiled an enviable list of other space records: first woman in orbit, first two-man crew, first three-man crew and first space walk...