Word: planetful
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...very survival of the human species depends upon the maintenance of an ocean clean and alive, spreading all around the world. The ocean is our planet's life belt...
...these reasons alone, Mars enthusiasts say, further exploration of the Red Planet, both unmanned and manned, is scientifically justified. "There is a growing sense of purpose being attached to a manned flight to Mars, both in the Soviet Union and the U.S.," says Vyacheslav Balebanov, a deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Like most of his counterparts in the U.S., he would prefer a measured, logical, step-by- step program to a more hazardous, hastily mounted manned mission. "We must start to explore Mars in detail before such a flight is possible...
...crew would have to remain on Mars for more than a year -- increasing the mission length to what now seems an unbearably long 1,100 days. But with the expenditure of more fuel, the explorers could blast off earlier, head toward Venus and loop around it, using the planet's gravity to whip their craft toward earth at a higher speed. That would cut the mission time to 600 to 700 days...
Another possible hazard on a long space journey has its source on planet earth: human nature. Soviet flights have demonstrated that performance levels begin to decrease as the days stretch into months. Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, whose 326 days aboard the space station Mir set a space endurance record last year, was down to only two hours of productive work a day toward the end of his eleven-month flight and had become decidedly peevish. "Leave me alone," he once snapped to mission control. "I have a lot of work...
...with an ambitious schedule of unmanned missions, the Soviet probes of the Martian moon Phobos are paving the way for a manned flight to Mars. The fact has not been lost on many Americans, who think the U. S. space program should aim at putting humans on the Red Planet. The cost is stupendous, the technology tricky, and the hazards real, but Mars still beckons. See SPACE...