Word: scientist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...always been a source of great annoyance to scientists: though the Apollo program is one of the milestones in the history of scientific exploration, they have been precluded from participating directly in it. Now, confident of the Apollo landing techniques perfected by the military pilots on previous missions, NASA has chosen a handsome 37-year-old geologist named Harrison ("Jack") Schmitt to be copilot of Apollo 17. If all goes well, Schmitt next week will take a historic step: he will become the first scientist from earth to walk on another world...
...Flagstaff, Ariz. There he was assigned the job of assembling photographs taken by unmanned Ranger spacecraft into detailed lunar maps for future moon walkers. Schmitt was fascinated by the task. Recalls former NASA Geologist Gene Shoemaker: "Jack caught the space bug." Indeed, as soon as NASA began recruiting scientist-astronauts in 1965, Schmitt applied. He was accepted despite a minor physical problem: an unusual and painful elongation of the large intestine...
...complex history and evolution of its own. Like the earth, the moon was once at least partially molten, and thus became differentiated (many heavier elements sank toward its center, while lighter elements floated to the surface to form a crust). In the words of Apollo's chief scientist, Noel Hinners: "It is a piece of the solar pot from which all the inner planets are made. We had no idea of that before we went there." Indeed, it is the rich lode of moon data already brought back by Apollo that makes the premature conclusion of the program such...
Nonetheless, they expect the last mission to be the most scientifically productive. In Scientist-Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, they will finally have the services of a professional geologist on the moon. The Taurus-Littrow landing site contains what may be small, volcanically created cinder cones; they seem to be miniature versions of earthly features like Honolulu's Diamond Head. The cones may well be remnants of what NASA Geochemist Robin Brett calls "some of the last belches of lunar activity before the moon turned off." Finally, Apollo 17 planners have scheduled a program of experiments and observation far more sophisticated...
Most of the papers auctioned off for $12,500 at Manhattan's Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc. were covered with complex mathematical formulas. According to the scientist who made the catalogue, the figures were comprehensible only to about 250 people in the world. Still, for those baffled by the scientific thoughts of the late Albeit Einstein, there were bits of less technical information to be gleaned: the author of E=m 2 ate eggs and drank tomato juice (he spilled some on his work) and bequeathed to history an unexplained (and here freely translated) bit of verse: I shan...