Word: saturn
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AFTER five months of relative somnolence, Cape Kennedy was once more a scene of feverish activity. All attention last week was focused on launch pad 39A, where the Apollo 13 spacecraft rested atop a huge Saturn 5 rocket, ready to carry U.S. astronauts to their third landing on the moon. As the long countdown began, there was noticeably less excitement than had accompanied previous moon missions; the complex Apollo launchings have already become almost routine...
More than jobs will be lost. After delivery of the last of the 15 Saturn 5s already purchased, NASA plans to suspend production of the mighty rockets. Seven of the eight remaining Saturns will be used for lunar landings, spaced six (instead of four) months apart. The last scheduled mission-Apollo 20-will be scrapped altogether and its rocket used in 1972 to launch an earth-orbiting, three-man space station. Unmanned flights will also feel the squeeze. Project Viking, the long-awaited mission that will land two life-detecting probes on Mars, has been postponed two years, from...
...material deposits above. Lacking dampening fluids or gases, the layer of rubble may have acted as an echo chamber in which the seismic waves reverberated. If so, the next big seismic event on the moon should be a scientific spectacular; the third-stage rocket of Apollo 13's Saturn 5 will be sent crashing into the lunar surface, creating an impact equivalent to the explosion of 8½ tons...
...space scientists had long expected the launch of a new Russian super rocket, a vehicle with a thrust of 10 million pounds (compared with the Saturn 5's 7.5 million pounds) that would put the Russians firmly back into the space race. Spy-in-the-sky satellites had actually photographed the monster rocket on its launch pad, and former NASA Administrator James Webb had spoken of its existence. But last summer, according to U.S. intelligence sources, a prototype of the giant booster exploded on the launch pad at the Tyuratum space complex in Central Asia, killing a number...
Mysterious Surge. The danger lasted for only a fraction of a second. As soon as the A.C. circuits failed, three batteries delivering direct current took over automatically, bringing the Apollo spacecraft's vital systems back to life. Meanwhile, the mighty Saturn rocket was blasting away unaffected, lifting the astronauts toward orbit. After quickly resetting circuit breakers that had been sprung by a mysterious surge of current, the astronauts managed to restore A.C. power. "We're weeding out our problems here," Conrad reported calmly. "I'm not sure we didn't get hit by lightning." Neither were...