Word: orbiteer
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...valedictory. Included was a tragic timetable: "12:30 a.m.?Mother already dead. 3 o'clock?both dead." He hated his father "with a mortal passion," he wrote, and regretted that his mother had given "the best 25 years of her life to that man." Clearly, the erratic orbit of his mind had already carried him off to some remote aphelion of despair. "Life is not worth living," he wrote. He had apparently concluded that if it were not worth living for him, it need not be for the others, either. With the special lucidity of the mad, Whitman meticulously...
...solar system -- that is, they revolve around the sun. They will not all remain in our solar system: it is known that certain ones will eventually escape, perhaps to be picked up be another star. It has been estimated that there are a hundred billion comets in orbit, Marsden said...
Brute-Force Buttonhook. The fuel problem arose during Gemini 10's tricky fourth-orbit rendezvous with Agena 10. To determine the final thrust required for the interception, Young and Collins used data from the on-board radar, inertial guidance and computer system. In some as yet unknown way, the system produced a figure nearly 7 ft. per sec. greater than the figure radioed up from ground control. When Collins' own slide-rule tabulation agreed with the spacecraft guidance system, Command Pilot Young chose to go with the double-checked on-board answer...
...minutes into the maneuver, Young realized that he had overthrust and was headed into an orbit aiming him several miles behind and above the Agena. Jamming his control stick down, Young dived the spacecraft in a brute-force attempt to get back on the correct trajectory. He failed, but finally did manage to swerve the spacecraft into a nearly normal "buttonhook" rendezvous. Though his quick thinking saved the maneuver, the incident burned up 268 more lbs. of precious propellant than mission plans had anticipated...
...tricky first orbit rendezvous over the Pacific with an Agena launched before the Gemini, simulating the critical Apollo-Lunar Excursion Module moon rendezvous...