Word: path
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...away as 161 miles (apogee). The average velocity was 17,535 m.p.h., only 8 m.p.h. slower than planned. Even more important, a maneuver of Gemini 6's second-stage launch rocket had placed the capsule in an orbital plane that nearly coincided with Gemini 7's; its path was almost directly below that of Gemini 7, slanting away at an angle of less than one-tenth...
...ahead, Gemini 7 sailed along at 17,290 m.p.h. The strategy of rendezvous, painstakingly plotted by NASA scientists and computers, called for Gemini 6 to catch up by taking advantage of orbital mechanics-the physical laws that govern the motion of orbiting bodies. Those laws state that an orbital path is determined by a delicate balance between gravity, which tries to pull a satellite down, and centrifugal force, which is proportional to the satellite's speed and tends to shove it farther away from the earth. A satellite orbiting close to earth, where the pull of gravity is strong...
...thrust helped the change from ellipse to circle by increasing the perigee from 100 to 140 miles above the earth; following the laws of orbital mechanics, though, it also reduced Gemini 6's closing speed on Gemini 7, now only 500 miles ahead. Later, he moved his flight path sideward and edged into the same orbital plane as Gemini 7 by yawing his spacecraft 90°, then firing a brief but finely timed thrust toward the south at right angles to his direction of motion...
Blue Lights. After Gemini 6 was jockeyed into a nearly circular orbit 170 miles above the earth and only 17 miles below Gemini 7's flight path, Copilot Stafford caught his first glimpse of 7's blue acquisition lights pulsing in the blackness above the South Atlantic. "Spotted Gemini 7 at 12 o'clock high," he reported...
...hair, and marches defiantly into the cold. She tramps down from Beacon Hill, shops in one of the gaudy New Boston stores and many of the old smaller ones, then just as quietly slips back through the park, leaving cries of crass commercialism to others. So familiar is her path, so unobtrusive, that you may not have noticed her. Your Christmas in Boston may consist entirely of fighting crowds at Jordan's to pick up that Christmas gift for the roommate who turned out to be not so bad after...