Word: space
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Most discouraging of all was the estimate that more than 10,000 separate tasks would have to be performed before the U.S. could put a man on the moon. James Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration between 1961 and 1968, compared the problem to "having to take a caterpillar and make it into a butterfly when we had never seen a butterfly...
...Braun has directed development of rocket-launch vehicles from the earliest Redstone. Von Braun helped develop the ablative heat shield, which dissipates the searing heat of reentry by flaking off in harmless fiery pieces. His Huntsville group can also claim credit for what has become known in the space agency as "cluster's last stand"-the grouping of several smaller rockets in a cluster to provide as much thrust as would a single, far larger rocket engine. Saturn 5's first stage, for example, uses five F-1 engines, each generating 1,500,000 lbs. of thrust...
...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 systems have proved so accurate that, if they...
...trains the astronauts. The professionalism of the Apollo crews is a reflection of Slayton's success-but leaves him less than totally fulfilled. Though he was chosen as one of the original seven U.S. astronauts in 1959, a mild heart murmur prevented him from ever venturing into space. When he was asked recently what he would best like to be remembered for, Slayton replied: "As the pilot of Apollo 11." There was no smile on his craggy face...
...have written about space with greater foresight and intelligence than Britain's Arthur C. Clarke. Now 51, and living in Ceylon, Clarke has published 40 books of science fact and fiction, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 1945, he made the first proposal for the orbiting of a synchronous communications satellite. In 1959, he made-and has just narrowly lost-a bet that man would land on the moon by June 1969. Here, at TIME'S request, Clarke weighs the consequences of man's first extraterrestrial venture...