Word: orbiters
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...duplicate of the troublesome docking mechanism. As minutes dragged by without any noticeable progress, the technical drama seemed faintly reminiscent of the struggle to patch up Apollo 13 for its limping return to earth last April. This time the astronauts themselves were not in any danger-they could orbit the moon in Kitty Hawk and return safely-but it was clear that without a functioning docking apparatus, Antares was virtually useless, and there could be no lunar landing...
...social needs, is trying to block the U.S. effort. An American labor leader turns out to be a Soviet agent, and a neurotic black astronaut who has not made his peace with the white world (an attitude the author finds entirely outrageous) goes mental while in moon orbit. The loudest noise to be heard is Drury rubbing his hands together as he exposes the pinko thinking of all those fluoridating reporters. "It was good to be engaged in a campaign against the government once more," a magazine journalist named Percy Mercy reflects. "It made a man feel right...
...landing is not made, the crew members will carry out experiments in the orbit around the moon...
Near Miss. Looking for a better solution, Singer recalled an old suggestion by Nobel Laureate Harold Urey, who argued that in the early days of the solar system the inner planets were accompanied in orbit around the sun by many moonlike bodies. Because only one of these ancient "moons" remains (the earth's), it seems quite likely that most of the others eventually collided with the planets. Singer dismisses the possibility that a direct hit by a moon could have reversed Venus' spin; the moon would have been much too small. But his calculations indicate that a near...
...Then, as Venusian gravity pulled it back, it would have again sped by the planet-but this time not so far out into space. Eventually, as the tidal forces between the two bodies increased during this strange celestial courtship, the moon would have been drawn into an increasingly smaller orbit around the planet. At the same time, Venus' spin would have been greatly retarded and eventually reversed; the planet's surface would also have become searingly hot from the friction of the tidal movements, and volcanoes would have erupted-giving off the thick clouds of gases that still...