Word: orbiters
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...evaluation time at Cape Canaveral last week, and if U.S. space technicians have any complaint, it is that U.S. space travelers still seem to think they are primarily airplane drivers. Like Colonel John Glenn before him, Commander Scott Carpenter soared into orbit with remarkably little faith in his capsule's automatic positioning equipment. He spent all but a few minutes of his five hours aloft "flying" his spaceship by hand, changing its attitude while in orbit with squirts of peroxide steam, at one point using two systems at once. As a result, he all but ran out of fuel...
...Much Control. By his own time-consuming efforts to control his capsule, articulate Astronaut Carpenter learned valuable lessons about how to fly, and how not to fly, orbiting spacecraft. Such a ship moves on a predetermined orbit, and except for firing retrorockets for reentry, an astronaut cannot appreciably change its course or speed. If he applies no control at all, the capsule will go through a drifting motion, rolling and tumbling slowly as it circles the earth...
...second orbit, the temperature of the cabin and of Carpenter's space suit fluctuated widely. Carpenter complained that he was sweating profusely. His body temperature was recorded...
...wire and the automatic control systems was only 45% full. Flight Director Christopher Columbus Kraft ordered Carpenter to start flying the capsule by the manual control system, which uses a separate fuel tank. As Carpenter approached California, Kraft decided that there was still enough fuel for a third orbit. But he told Astronaut Shepard at the microphone in the tracking station at Point Arguello: "We still want to emphasize to him to limit his auto fuel usage...
...crisis came on the third orbit. Project communicators, listening intently to Carpenter's voice as he passed overhead, were disturbed by his tone. "We feel the astronaut was acting somewhat tired during the last pass," the Woomera station later reported. Added the station at Kauai, Hawaii: "We had the impression that he was very confused about what was going on, but it was very difficult to assess whether he was confused or preoccupied...