Word: schirra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...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...
...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 5 ft. of the 54B in a simulated docking maneuver. On later missions, Apollo will...
...Schirra meanwhile, was setting new records. The 45-year-old Navy captain, a veteran of near-perfect Mercury and Gemini missions and the first pilot to make a space rendezvous, became the first man to a drink coffee and the first to develop a full-blown cold in space. "I've gone through eight or nine Kleenexes with some pretty good blows, he radioed, "and I've taken two aspirins." NASA doctors prescribed decongestant pills that they routinely store aboard Apollo spacecraft...
...mission headed into its third day, the astronauts had missed only one of their scheduled operations-a live TV transmission from inside the craft. Seconds before the camera was to have been switched on, Schirra complained that the crew was running behind schedule because of several operations that had been added to the flight. "I tell you," he said testily, "this flight TV will be delayed without further discussion." Houston controllers quietly acceded and agreed to reschedule the TV for this week...