Word: space
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...eternal quest for the new and the unknown has led him to the highest mountains and the deepest ocean trenches, the most impenetrable jungles and the most forbidding deserts. This week it promises to lead him across the vacuum of space to another world. At Cape Kennedy, a 363-ft. moon rocket stood ready to launch three American astronauts on man's first attempt to set foot on the surface of another celestial body. If the bold attempt is successful, the journey will be remembered as long as the human race endures. It will open...
...last moment, it was possible that the failure of a single tiny device among the 15 million individual parts of Apollo 11 might cause delay on the pad or more serious consequences in space. Up to the last moment, too, complaints were being voiced about misspent money and misguided motives. But not even the skeptics could ignore or entirely downgrade so transcendent an event-one of those shining moments in history when man rises above himself toward greatness...
...Apollo 11 astronauts face experiences never before encountered by men. They are cool, pragmatic technicians, superbly trained for their flight and thoroughly familiar with their spacecraft. But they will be attempting the first descent to the moon, the first exploration of its surface, the first lift-off back into space. It is not unlikely, then, that beneath their composed exteriors, they share some of the doubts and even fears felt by their predecessors...
...nationality of the first men to land on an extraterrestrial body should be of negligible importance. But the fact is that it will be seen by many as a specifically American victory in a hard-fought race whose outcome has not always been so clear. After Sputnik, when Soviet space firsts and U.S. space failures were occurring with disheartening regularity, a Soviet official boasted: "The space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union have demonstrated for all the world to see that socialism is a better launching pad than capitalism...
Congratulations from Russian officials and astronauts have become progressively more cordial after each new U.S. space victory, and Apollo 8 Astronaut Frank Borman received one of the warmest welcomes ever accorded an American during his triumphant tour of Russia. By no means, however, have the Russians dropped out entirely. Just before the scheduled Apollo 11 shot, the Russians launched an unmanned spaceship toward the moon-in an obvious attempt to win some attention away from the U.S. Actually, some U.S. space officials believe that Moscow has decided to leapfrog the moon and head for the planets...