Word: spacecrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fire in the spacecraft!" is a distress call the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes never to hear again. In the aftermath of last January's Apollo fire, NASA is spending more than $100 million to that end. By the time Astronauts Wally Schirra, Bonn Eisele and Walter Cunningham lift off a launch pad for the first manned Apollo flight next year, their spacecraft should be virtually fireproof...
Engineers and technicians began working on fireproofing soon after the tragedy. Since then, just about every conceivable combustible has been removed from the moon-bound spacecraft. Flammable components that could not be replaced have been isolated by fire-confining barriers. "It's been an extremely difficult job," says George Low, 41, who was appointed Apollo program manager in April. "But we'll have a spacecraft in which we probably won't be able to even start a fire when we try to this winter...
...laws of chance suggest that a manned spacecraft will sooner or later be stranded in space. Yet neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. has a workable orbital-escape system (OES) for bringing stranded astronauts back to earth. Now, NASA engineers are designing a sort of space lifeboat that may give astronauts a reasonable shot at survival...
Developed by Caldwell C. Johnson, assistant chief of the Advanced Spacecraft Technology Division at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, the lifeboat is a rigid 400-lb. fiber glass shell lined with polyurethane foam and shaped like an old French bathtub-narrower at one end than at the other. It is 6 ft. long, 4| ft. wide, 21 ft. deep. Sheathed in a Johnson-designed nylon heat shield for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, the craft is equipped with a swivel-mounted retrorocket, attitude-control jets, a transponder for ground control, a built-in oxygen supply...
...Womb at the Top." To abandon a foundering spacecraft, the astronaut dons extravehicular activity (EVA) gear, seals himself in the lifeboat and vents carbon dioxide and excess oxygen from his EVA suit to power the craft's attitude-control system. Face pressed against the porthole, he aligns his lifeboat with the horizon by firing the attitude-control jets. After sighting a landmark on earth with the reticle marked on the porthole, he aims and fires the retrorocket for 100 seconds, thus braking the lifeboat to a de-orbiting speed of 16,500 m.p.h. Then the retrorocket is jettisoned...