Word: orbiteer
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...TIME'S Houston Bureau Chief Don Neff, "seemed to me the most thrilling thing I had ever seen." That was in 1959, and Neff has been searching for more expansive superlatives ever since. He has watched other space shots, and as each one traveled farther or stayed in orbit longer, Neff was more and more impressed by the skill and dedication of the engineers and scientists whose work he reported. He was on hand at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when word was passed that Mariner 4 had made a successful flight past Mars, and the electric tension...
...went back over the history of the U.S. space effort, she was reminded of how much has been accomplished in so short a time. And having worked on so many of TIME'S stories about the age of space, she felt a new involvement. The hurried effort to orbit the little Explorer satellite in 1958, John Glenn's historic orbital ride, the first space walk ... all man's halting steps suddenly seemed to have brought him within reach of his lunar goal. And by now, every member of TIME'S Science section has a personal stake...
Shortly after liftoff, Apollc 8 will go into a "parking" orbit 115 miles above the earth. If mission controllers are satisfied that all the ship's systems are working properly, the final stage of the Saturn booster will be reignited during the second or third orbit. The resulting thrust will increase Apollo's speed to 24,000 m.p.h.-enough to free it from the earth's environment and send it on a curving trajectory toward the moon...
...approaches within 30,000 miles of its lunar target, its speed will have tapered off to 2,100 m.p.h. Then, as the moon's gravity begins to exert a stronger and stronger tug, Apollo will accelerate once more. To slow the spaceship down and place it in lunar orbit, Apollo's big engine will fire a strong braking blast. Following two circuits of the moon, the engine will be used again to move Apollo's orbit to 70 miles above the cratered lunar landscape, which the astronauts will survey and photograph. Eight revolutions later, the engine will...
Long Shot. For all the meticulous planning, NASA acknowledges that Apollo 8 involves greater risks than any of the previous manned space flights. Not only will the spacecraft be as many as three days away from a safe landing (v. no more than three hours in earth-orbiting missions), but it will be entirely dependent on its own propulsion system to break out of lunar orbit. If that lone engine should falter, the astronauts would be stranded, circling the moon with absolutely no hope of rescue...