Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Seconds later everyone wondered where. "I don't know what happened here," Conrad said excitedly. "We had everything in the world drop out." Inside the spacecraft, as it passed through the dark clouds. Astronauts Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean had been bathed in a sudden, brilliant flash. Immediately, red and yellow warning lights began blinking on the command module's instrument panels. All three fuel cells had stopped working; alternating-current circuits were dead, and the electrically operated gyroscopic platform that allows the astronauts to measure their attitude and velocity was tumbling out of control. There...
Mysterious Surge. The danger lasted for only a fraction of a second. As soon as the A.C. circuits failed, three batteries delivering direct current took over automatically, bringing the Apollo spacecraft's vital systems back to life. Meanwhile, the mighty Saturn rocket was blasting away unaffected, lifting the astronauts toward orbit. After quickly resetting circuit breakers that had been sprung by a mysterious surge of current, the astronauts managed to restore A.C. power. "We're weeding out our problems here," Conrad reported calmly. "I'm not sure we didn't get hit by lightning." Neither were...
...scheduled flight of Apollo 12 is no less complex or hazardous than the earlier moon shots. This attempt will include a number of dangerous innovations. The trickiest is a free-flying approach to the moon that, if it is marred by an engine malfunction, could send the spacecraft into a deadly sun orbit...
...rocketry system virtually identical to the one that propelled Apollo 11. Yet their nautically named command ship, Yankee Clipper, will blaze its own distinctive path. Halfway to the moon, Apollo 12 Skipper Charles ("Pete") Conrad, 39, a veteran of two earth-girdling Gemini flights, will fire the spacecraft's service propulsion engine, jolting the ship out of its "free-return" trajectory. No longer able to loop the moon automatically and return to earth, should its engine falter, Apollo 12 could be lost forever in an orbit around the sun. But NASA flight planners feel that the maneuver is worth...
...that has been the resting place of Surveyor 3 ever since the unmanned probe soft-landed on the moon more than two years ago. Bean will descend first, attached to Conrad with an Alpine-style tether. If all goes well, the two men will try to reach the spidery spacecraft, examine and photograph it and then bring back some of its parts, including a 17-lb. TV camera. These cannibalized samples should provide spacecraft designers with invaluable information about the kind of wear they can expect in equipment at future lunar bases...