Word: orbiteer
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...either case, the 85-lb. Early Bird is destined for a high orbit (22,300 miles above the Atlantic at the equator), will eventually transmit TV broadcasts and telephone messages between Europe and North America. Within 40 hours after launch, it is scheduled to be in position, orbiting at the same speed as the earth's rotation and thus, in effect, providing a stationary relay station in space. After several days of testing, it will beam a series of international telecasts. Then its 240 two-way voice channels will be switched on for telephone calls-Comsat's first...
Even the Russians, who startled the world by letting a space traveler take a "stroll" outside his orbiting capsule only a few days before (TIME cover, March 26), have yet to claim that their cosmonauts have varied the earth-girdling curve of a spacecraft in flight.* But before men can make a lunar excursion or perform other active missions outside the earth's atmosphere, they must learn to make those orbit alterations with exquisite precision. Spaceships must be maneuvered so surely that they can meet and mate aloft; their pilots must act as accurate and reliable links...
Molly's men began work right after a tall Titan booster had tossed them into an elliptical orbit 139.2 miles at apogee, 100.1 miles at perigee. There was a pair of biological experiments to get out of the way: the fertility and growth of sea-urchin eggs had to be checked for the effects of weightlessness; human blood cells were exposed to the stress of radiation plus weightlessness. Then, as the Molly Brown curved round the bottom of the globe and came up across the Pacific toward the American coast, Gus Grissom got ready for the first orbital change...
...Flying" his ship with brief bursts of energy from the appropriate rockets, Capsule Commander Grissom brought it absolutely level. Then he fired two forward-pointing rockets for precisely 73 seconds. Molly slowed down; the apogee of her orbit dropped by 34 miles. The spacecraft was now on an almost circular course...
...into space. Computers carefully checked out all Gemini's systems before the launch, kept precise track of the spacecraft's position in the heavens at every moment, plotted trajectories and issued precise commands to the astronauts. On their detailed instructions, the astronauts made the first change of orbit ever achieved in flight; computers not only designed the new orbit, but also told the command pilot at what time and for how long he should fire his thrusters to achieve...