Word: spacecrafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Apollo 7 whirled through orbit after orbit around the earth last week, the growing monotony of the mission was a major measure of its success. Presented with little challenge 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...
...astronauts also shot some scenes from the spacecraft windows, catching glimpses of clouds and coastlines racing by. They panned Apollo's interior as they described equipment; they demonstrated how loose drops of water are collected with a vacuum hose and how water is added to their dehydrated food...
...flight continued without serious problems, an air of heady optimism began to pervade the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Said NASA's Christopher Kraft: "The performance of the vehicle to date has been very close to perfect." At week's end, officials were hinting that if Apollo 7 continued to perform faultlessly all the way through its splashdown this week, the planned lunar-orbital mission of Apollo 8 might well be advanced by two weeks...
...flight was not with out its niggling problems. An oxygen-flow warning light flashed on, but the astronauts quickly determined that a sensor, not the oxygen flow, was at fault Astronaut Cunningham, 36, a civilian physicist on his first flight, reported increasing pressure in a radiator that cools the spacecraft. The trouble was not serious enough to affect the mission. Astronaut Eisele, 38, an Air Force major also making his first space mission, reported radio interference that sounded like a commercial. "I', getting a hot tip on some hostpital-insurance plan from some guy," he said. "Maybe they...
...drink coffee and the first to develop a full-blown cold in space. "I've gone through eight or nine Kleenexes with some pretty good blows, he radioed, "and I've taken two aspirins." NASA doctors prescribed decongestant pills that they routinely store aboard Apollo spacecraft...