Word: pasted
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Obviously it takes brave men to climb into that capsule and undergo the immense risks that lie between the earth and the moon and the earth again. Yet, to thoughtful skeptics, the superorganized voyage of Apollo 11 suggests that lone, individual courage belongs to the past. The astronauts often seem to be interchangeable parts of a vast mechanism. They are buffered by a thousand protective devices, encased in layers of metal and wires and transistors, their very heartbeats monitored for deviation. Most of their decisions are made by computers. Hundreds of ships, planes, doctors and technicians stand by to rescue...
...vast supportive forces, the astronauts themselves are essentially loners. Before they take off, they have no guarantees of success, let alone survival. Airborne, they can be aided only so far. After that, like the very earliest adventurers, they are on their own. Out in space, the future confronts the past. If they are stranded, no Navy will light their way home, no friendly tribes will take them...
...death can be looked at steadily," wrote La Rochefoucauld. The talk of "fuel margins" and EVAs is, in part, a way of giving the eyes a rest. Moreover, each astronaut has the kind of test-pilot fatalism that calms -and deadens-the nerves. They need it. In the past, there were more imagined terrors to be dispelled. Today, the known dangers of failure, mechanical and human, are more numerous and harder to dismiss. The astronauts knew that if, on landing, the lunar module tilted more than 35°, they would be marooned on the moon. Each could remember that, with...
...patriotism and unwillingness to let the team down. What is important is that individual valor can be preserved in a collective age. Hemingway once defined courage as "grace under pressure." In their balloon-shaped, ungainly suits, the Apollo 11 astronauts have demonstrated that man, despite his murderous and chaotic past, can still achieve a state of grace...
...longer belonged to the Viet Cong. Last year more than 8,000 tons of Viet Cong ammunition and food were captured. In the first five months of this year, 5,000 more tons have been discovered. The Communists have been unable to launch major, concentrated attacks in the past ten months. With that record, the allied command in Saigon is understandably reluctant to shift tactics...