Word: orbiteer
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...radar sensors (which can follow an object as small as a .30-cal. rifle bullet 200 miles into space), computers and special cameras with a range of 50,000 miles. The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) can tell where every object is at any given moment. Of the orbiting objects, 251 are "useful payloads"-201 American, 43 Russian, three French, two British and two Canadian. The remaining 860 pieces are ''garbage," including Mike Collins' lost Hasselblad camera and Dick Gordon's jettisoned space pack. (Ed White's glove has dropped out of orbit...
Apollo Simulation. Having taught so much with its failure, Gemini was able to demonstrate even more with its many successes. Within 94 minutes after their launch from Cape Kennedy, while they were still on their first orbit, Conrad and Gordon rendezvoused and docked with an Agena target vehicle that had been blasted into orbit only a few hours earlier. It was the first successful space link-up accomplished so soon after launch, and it simulated a vital step in the Apollo moon mission. After exploring the surface of the moon, Apollo astronauts will have to blast off in their little...
...their captive Agena, the Gemini 11 astronauts also reached the highest altitude ever flown by man. While consuming nearly three-quarters of a ton of fuel in a 25-second burn, the engine increased the Gemini-Agena's speed by 620 m.p.h. and shoved it into an orbit with an apogee of 850 miles-far exceeding Gemini 10's record height of 476 miles. As his ship approached maximum altitude, Conrad could not contain his excitement. "It's fantastic," he radioed to controllers at Carnarvon, Australia. "You wouldn't believe it. I've got India...
...ships into a slow, cartwheeling rotation around the system's center of mass-a point on the rope 35 ft. from the Gemini (see diagram). Gradually, as Gemini and Agena revolved in a giant circle, the rope stretched tight, the oscillations stopped, and the two craft continued in orbit a fixed distance apart...
...experiment clearly proved that tethered spaceships can orbit in formation without wasting fuel. Robert Gilruth, director of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, immediately conjured up "colonies of vehicles fastened together in ways like this." The slow rotation of the system also provided a bonus: a small centrifugal force that acted like a weak gravitational pull, causing objects to drift toward and finally "fall" on the rear wall of Gemini's cabin. It was the first artificial gravity created during a manned orbital flight. After three hours of tethered orbiting, Conrad flipped a switch that jettisoned Gemini...