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Word: sextant (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...Charles Stark Draper, 67, director of the Instrumentation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To solve the problems of navigation, NASA went straight to the nation's leading authority on inertial guidance. The system devised by Draper for Apollo includes telescopes, a sextant, and a computerized inertial reference "platform" that tells astronauts where they are in space, where they are headed and how fast. But how could they be sure that it would work?, the NASA brass wanted to know. "I told them I'd go along and run it myself," recalls Draper. The on-board navigation...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Moon: WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE | 7/18/1969 | See Source »

...Using a sextant, they took star sightings and pinpointed lunar landmarks...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Nation: THE VOYAGE: POETRY AND PERFECTION | 1/3/1969 | See Source »

...from the well-functioning spacecraft, Astronauts Wally Schirra, Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele fought off ennui as they plodded through the humdrum housekeeping and engineering duties necessary to prove their craft moonworthy. They fired and refired the ship's big rocket engine and practiced sighting stars through a sextant; they tested their computers and cooling system, and transmitted to a ground station the same sort of signals a lunar module would send while returning from the surface of the moon. For astronauts and space watchers alike, the high points of the week were the television shows, shot with...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Space: Acrobats in Orbit | 10/25/1968 | See Source »

...astronauts will also at tempt to rendezvous with the burnt-out final stage of their launch rocket, using only a sextant and a telescope for direction finding; the Apollo command module is not equipped with rendezvous radar. During their week-and-a-half space journey, they will start Apollo's large, 20,500-lb.-thrust engine eight times to test its reliability. That engine literally means the difference between life and death. On actual moon missions, it will be used to guide an Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the moon, and, later, to fire the craft out of lunar...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Science: A Chance to Be First | 10/11/1968 | See Source »

...modest office in Santa Barbara, cutting stencils and running off lessons on a mimeograph machine. As a result of the story, their mail tripled, monthly enrollment in the navigation course more than doubled, franchise and translation requests came in from Europe and Africa, and sales of a sextant they supply to students went up dramatically. The Simonsens are now expanding business to include a "Nautical Book a Month Club," an air-navigation course, and sales of other nautical aids such as a mini-compass and a "Course Converter"-a device that takes the math out of course charting and leaves...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Letter From The Publisher: Apr. 5, 1968 | 4/5/1968 | See Source »

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