Word: saturn
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first U.S. manned flight since three astronauts were killed in a fire on the same launch pad 21 months before. Any more serious trouble would all but wipe out U S hopes of landing men on the moon before the end of 1969. Thus, as the towering Saturn IB rocket lifted ponderously off the pad after a heart-stopping moment of hesitation, U.S. hopes rose with it. At week's end, the eleven-day mission of Apollo 7 was proceeding as near to perfection as space officials had dared hope...
...lift-off seemed slow and laborious to viewers, there was good reason. Apollo and its two-stage launch rocket weighed a staggering 1.3 million lbs , only slightly less than the 1.6 million-lb. thrust of the Saturn 1B's first stage. As a result, acceleration was gradual; Astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham were subjected to only a fraction of the oppressive G-forces experienced on earlier flights by Mercury and Gemini crews...
...audience. Seconds later viewers also saw the dramatic jettisoning of the Apollo escape tower, which arced high above the spacecraft before plummeting back toward earth. Finally, about 10½ min. after launch, out of IGOR's range, Apollo 7, still attached to the second-stage Saturn 4B rocket, glided into an orbit 140 miles high at perigee and 174 miles at apogee -remarkably close to the programmed 142-by 176-mile orbit. "We're having a ball." Schirra reported happily to ground controllers...
Simulated Rescue. After firing thrusters on the attached Saturn 4B to maneuver in orbit, the astronauts cut loose the joined Apollo command and service modules while they were passing over Hawaii. "If this were the lunar mission," explained Haney, "that is aproximately the point where we might ignite the Saturn 4B to put us on a lunar trajectory." Instead, Spacecraft Commander Schirra used Apollo's control thrusters to move his craft away from the Saturn 4B and pitched the spacecraft up and around so that it was facing the rocket. He then nudged the craft to within...
Completion of these three missions without any serious problems would seem to violate the laws of probability. Apollo has 2,000,000 functional parts, 587,000 inspection points, and 47 engines (not including the 42 in Saturn 5 and three more in the escape tower that is jettisoned shortly after launch). Any one of those items conceivably could cause trouble. But NASA nonetheless is optimistically planning for success. Says Metallurgist Thomas Paine, who this week replaced retiring NASA Administrator James Webb: "We have put great stress on the ability of the Apollo 9 crew to operate the LM. All subsequent...